Panicked Bitcoiner mistakenly pays over $70K of BTC in fees

1 week ago

One presumably panicked Bitcoin idiosyncratic paid astir 0.75 BTC ($70,500) successful a replace-by-fee (RBF) transaction fee.

The transaction successful question was sent astir 30 minutes aft midnight UTC connected April 8. It was the 2nd effort astatine performing an RBF that changed the transaction's people address, sending 0.48 Bitcoin ($37,770) with 0.2 BTC of alteration ($16,357).

Anmol Jain, vice president of investigations astatine crypto forensics steadfast AMLBot, told Cointelegraph that the archetypal transaction featured a “default oregon conservative” fee. The archetypal RBF raised the interest to astir treble the magnitude and changed the output address.

Both of those transactions are waiting for a confirmation that volition ne'er come. This is due to the fact that the overmuch higher interest RBF transaction took its spot with the aforesaid output arsenic the 2nd RBF transaction — presumably, an effort to bump the interest to guarantee that the RBF is processed alternatively than the archetypal transaction.

A presumed panic-induced error

The transaction has signs of a panic-induced error, with the idiosyncratic sending a consequent transaction accelerated to forestall the archetypal transaction from being included successful a artifact and becoming final. Jain suggested immoderate imaginable explanations:

“Maybe helium meant to usage 30.5692 sat but, owed to haste oregon food fingers, ended up utilizing 305,692 sat.“

The 2nd RBF transaction besides added an further input unspent transaction output (UTXO). This UTXO contained astir 0.75 Bitcoin (BTC). The alteration was mistakenly included arsenic portion of the fee, apt due to the fact that the idiosyncratic failed to update the alteration code oregon misjudged the transaction’s structure.

Another anticipation raised by Jain is that the idiosyncratic got confused betwixt a interest successful implicit presumption and 1 acceptable successful satoshi per virtual byte (transaction size) oregon that the automated publication down the transaction contained a bug. The wallet could let mounting a interest successful satoshis, which could pb to a script wherever the interest is acceptable mode excessively low, a informing astir the debased interest and an overcorrection:

“System reads it arsenic 30 sats full fee, which is mode excessively low, truthful idiosyncratic types 305000 reasoning it means 30.5 sat/vB, and the wallet really applies 305,000 sats/vB, which is insane.“

Replace-by-fee: a arguable feature

RBF is simply a wide misunderstood and arguable diagnostic of Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions are considered non-final until they are included successful a block, with further confirmation by much blocks successful the aforesaid chain.

Transactions successful the mempool are astatine the mercy of miners — who are expected to beryllium profit-driven. Bitcoin developers foresaw that with aggregate conflicting Bitcoin transactions, the fiscal inducement would beryllium to process the 1 paying the higher fee.

There is nary casual mode to forestall Bitcoin miners from simply including the transaction that was sent first, and it is besides not straightforward to found which transaction was submitted archetypal owed to the decentralized quality of the network. Consequently, this inducement was recognized successful the RBF feature, allowing users to edit unconfirmed transactions by submitting an alternate transaction with a higher fee.

This led to immoderate controversies successful the past, with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponent Hayden Otto claiming that RBFs allowed for Bitcoin double-spends backmost successful 2019. In contrast, Bitcoin Cash has removed the diagnostic and claimed that unconfirmed transactions sent connected that web are last and unafraid to accept.

Still, with the mode blockchains function, RBF-like transactions were confirmed to occasionally hap connected Bitcoin Cash either way. This is due to the fact that RBF is conscionable an implied spot of a Bitcoin-like statement mechanics that was formalized arsenic a feature.

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