AntPool, a Bitcoin mining pool, has agreed to refund the record high $3 million transaction fee it mined last week, but only after verifying the owner's identity. The pool froze the fee temporarily due to its risk control system. AntPool has requested the original owner to verify their identity before December 10, 2023, by using a signing tool like Electrum or Bitcoin Core and sending the signed text to their support email address.
The transaction that occurred last week set a new record for the largest fee in U.S. dollars for a single Bitcoin transaction. The user intended to transfer 55.77 BTC ($2.1 million) but mistakenly paid a fee of 83.65 BTC ($3.1 million). AntPool mined the transaction in block 818,087 but had not commented publicly until now.
A user named "83_5BTC" claimed to be the victim of the $3 million fee, stating that their wallet was hacked. After creating a new cold wallet and transferring 139 BTC to it, the funds were immediately transferred out. While the user provided a signed message to prove ownership, it is unsure whether the attacker signed it using the compromised wallet.
According to Mononaut, a pseudonymous developer, the likely cause of the hack was the use of a low-entropy wallet vulnerable to attacks. It is believed that replace-by-fee (RBF) was utilized to quickly increase the transaction fee for faster processing. Mononaut speculated that multiple attackers could have competed to steal the funds, resulting in the high fee.
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