Ethereum User Pays $9,500 Fees For Sending $120: Error 'Destroyed My Life'

A person mistakenly paid a transaction fee of $9,500 for a simple transfer worth just $120 on the Ethereum network. The Ethereum user is now trying to contact the miners that processed the transaction.

"So I paid 200,000 Gwei for this transaction and destroyed my life," a Reddit user, who goes by the name of "Proudbitcoiner", said in a recent post. This was equivalent to 23.5 ETH, worth $9,500.

The user said they accidentally typed the wrong transaction fee while trying to transfer $120.

MetaMask, the Ethereum wallet used to process the transaction, did not automatically put a correct "gas" or transaction fee limit, which resulted in the transaction failure. Proudbitcoiner then decided to change the fee manually. But instead of entering the desired fee on the "Gas Limit", the user entered the amount on the "Gas Price" input field.

Any transaction in the Ethereum blockchain can only be confirmed if a transaction fee, called gas (measured in "Gwei") is paid. While Metamask automatically puts an average gas fee, users can choose to enter their own gas fee, but this has to be entered on the "Gas Fee Limit" and not on the "Gas Price".

Ethereum 1.0 is a proof-of-work blockchain, meaning the miners confirm the transaction. For this particular transaction, it was the mining pool Ethermine that confirmed it. Coincidentally, it was also the same mining pool that processed a transaction fee of $2.6 million for sending 350 ether in June, News.Bitcoin.com reported.

Proudbitcoiner tried to message Ethermine and its CEO Peter Pratscher through social media but received no reply. But Ethermine is unlikely to return the money, News.Bitcoin.com reported. In June, after confirming the $2.6 million transaction fee, the network distributed the block reward to all the miners within their pool. At the time, Bitfly, the parent company of Ethermine, tweeted that it will not refund any such errors in the future.