In the cryptocurrency space, astonishing transaction records occasionally emerge. Among them, the "exorbitant transaction fee" incidents on the Ethereum network are particularly noteworthy, often concealing security vulnerabilities, operational errors, or even organized extortion attacks.
June 2020 "GasPrice Extortion Attack"
In June 2020, the Ethereum network experienced three consecutive abnormal transactions within three days, with transaction fees far exceeding normal levels, totaling approximately $5.7 million.
- First transaction: A transfer of only $130 incurred a fee of approximately $2.6 million (equivalent to about 10,668.73 ETH at the time).
- Second transaction: A transfer of $86,000 also incurred a fee of approximately $2.6 million.
- Third transaction: Incurred a fee of approximately $500,000.
At the time, the recommended transaction fee on the Ethereum network was around $0.153, making the abnormality of these transactions self-evident.
Blockchain security company PeckShield conducted an in-depth analysis and proposed the "GasPrice extortion attack" theory. They suggested that attackers might have gained partial backend access to an exchange through phishing or similar methods. This access might have allowed attackers to send funds to the exchange's whitelist addresses but not directly transfer funds to their own accounts.
Consequently, the attackers exploited this access to initiate transactions with extremely high Gas Prices, rapidly depleting the ETH in the exchange's hot wallet as transaction fees. The purpose was likely to extort a ransom from the exchange. It was speculated that the exchange's server permissions might have been partially compromised, preventing it from using its private keys to mitigate losses or transfer remaining funds in time.
Analysis by the CoinHolmes team also supported this inference, suggesting that the abnormal transaction address was highly likely to be an exchange's hot wallet address. The community and the imToken team's speculations at the time also focused on program vulnerabilities or hacker extortion.
Other High Transaction Fee Incidents
Beyond suspected extortion attacks, high transaction fee incidents due to operational errors or mechanism vulnerabilities have also occurred historically.
- September 2021 Bitfinex "Fat Finger" Error: Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex made a severe error when setting the transaction fee for a $100,000 USDT transfer, accidentally paying an exorbitant $24 million in Ethereum transaction fees. Fortunately, the miner who received the fee later agreed to return most of the funds.
- October 2022 FTX Gas Abuse Incident: Users exploited FTX exchange's free withdrawal mechanism at the time by setting extremely high Gas Limits to mint XEN tokens, causing FTX to pay over 81 ETH in Gas fees. This constituted an exploitation of the exchange's policy vulnerability.
- November 2018 GasToken Vulnerability: The GasToken on Ethereum once had a critical vulnerability that allowed attackers to force exchanges without Gas usage limits for withdrawals to random addresses to pay extremely high transaction fees, potentially profiting the attackers.
Impact and Current Status of the Incidents
These exorbitant transaction fee incidents, regardless of their cause, have exposed potential weaknesses in centralized exchanges' private key management, permission control, and risk management processes. For users, they also serve as a wake-up call: even large platforms can suffer significant losses due to internal issues or external attacks.
From the perspective of Ethereum's own development, high Gas fees were once a major bottleneck hindering its growth. However, with "The Merge" in September 2022 transitioning to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and the "Dencun" upgrade in March 2024 introducing scaling technologies like Proto-Danksharding, transaction fees on the Ethereum mainnet have significantly decreased. Concurrently, the widespread adoption of Layer 2 scaling solutions (such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, etc.) has made most daily transactions possible at extremely low costs, and the days of frequent exorbitant Gas fees due to network congestion are now rare.
Nevertheless, security remains a dynamic challenge. For exchanges and project teams, comprehensive security audits, strict permission management, and real-time anomaly monitoring are crucial. For ordinary users, choosing reputable platforms with robust security measures and properly safeguarding their assets remains an unchanging principle.
The platform information for sale in this article changes dynamically with the listing and delisting of various exchanges. Please refer to the official announcements of the exchanges.
