The cryptographic community was captivated by two transactions Ethereum abnormal that were held earlier this week. Both transactions were for relatively small amounts, but the transaction fees paid by the portfolio from which they originated were astronomical - totaling more than $ 5 million.

Many users on Twitter have offered their two cents on what could have been the reason for these massive transaction fee payments, with theories ranging from a software problem to a money laundering system.

Vitalik Buterin - the co-founder of Ethereum - is now talking about these deals, explaining that they could be part of an elaborate blackmail plan.

Ethereum sees two bizarre transactions, costing $ 5.0 million to send $ 83,000 of ETH

Earlier this week, CryptoSlate reported that a wallet spent 10,668 ETH as a fee for a relatively small transaction of 0.55 ETH - worth around $ 130 based on the current Ethereum price .

These massive costs of $ 2.5 million have sparked speculation on social media as to what could have been the cause.

The one thing that speculators widely agreed on was that the source portfolio belonged to a stock exchange, and the frequency of outgoing transactions seemed to confirm this.

Shortly thereafter, another similar incident occurred, the source wallet again sending a relatively small ETH transaction with costs of several million dollars.

The research firm Glassnode spoke about this in a recent article, explaining that the fees - worth approximately $ 2.5 million at the time of writing this report - were identical to the previous abnormal transaction.

“A second incident of an Ethereum transaction with huge fees occurred today. The two transactions were broadcast by the same address and had an identical price of 10,668.73,185 ETH . The first tx was extracted by [SparkPool], the second was extracted by Ethermine. "

The two transaction fee payments can be seen in the table below:

Buterin: High ETH transaction costs may be caused by blackmail

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has now highlighted what could be the impetus for costs of $ 5 million + tx.

He noted in a recent tweet that it was possible that harmful actors could have partially accessed the key to an exchange wallet, threatening to burn a huge amount of crypto in tx fees unless they receive a compensation.

"So the million dollar taxes * can * actually * be blackmail. The theory: the pirates have captured partial access to the exchange key; they cannot withdraw but can send tx without effect with any gas price. So they threaten to “burn” all funds via taxes unless they are compensated. "

   

 

CryptoSlate will update this report if new information becomes available regarding any of these theories.

The two transactions can be viewed by navigating to these links: first tx, second tx.