Those outrageous yet real stories about miner fees.

Written by: Huang Shiliang

Recently, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen their network miner fees hit new lows.

Once upon a time, these two chains were dubbed "noble chains" due to their high transaction costs, being the places where the industry consumed the most user fees. However, in recent months, Bitcoin's miner fee has essentially returned to a historical low of 1 sat/vbyte, and Ethereum's Gas fee has also dropped to a level of just a few Gwei.

It's time for a nostalgia trip, sharing some past stories from the crypto world. Here are a few "outrageous yet real" stories about miner fees on Bitcoin.

Exchange Withdrawal Miner Fees Once Skyrocketed

Around 2017, I personally experienced a "crisis" triggered by miner fees.

At that time, I was preparing to withdraw a sum of Bitcoin from an exchange, but after submitting the request, I found that the transaction was taking an unusually long time to confirm on the blockchain. When I checked the transaction details on a blockchain explorer, I discovered that it contained a massive number of very small transaction inputs (UTXO).

The size of a transaction (in bytes) depends on the number of its inputs and outputs. The more inputs there are, the larger the transaction size, and the higher the required miner fee.

However, the exchange at that time adopted a fixed fee withdrawal strategy and did not dynamically adjust the fee based on the actual "size" of the transaction. This led to my transaction being severely underfunded in terms of miner fees, and the mining pool was indifferent to the sender; my transaction was ruthlessly abandoned by miners across the network.

Based on the network congestion at that time and the enormous size of this transaction, it actually required a miner fee of over 0.5 Bitcoin—considering today's prices, that's a staggering amount.

Let me briefly explain the technical principle:

Just like the news reported earlier about a bus company sending several truckloads of coins to the bank, requiring dozens of employees and several days to count. The manpower and material costs consumed in this process might exceed the total amount of coins received.

Similarly, in the Bitcoin network, consolidating a large amount of scattered UTXOs into a single large transaction also incurs significant miner fee costs.

I contacted the exchange's customer service, hoping they could help expedite the transaction, but the response I received was something along the lines of "This is a characteristic of blockchain; please be patient." The customer service just wanted to shirk responsibility.

I traced the source of this transaction. By analyzing on-chain data, I pieced together a shocking conclusion: the exchange's hot wallet system likely suffered from a "dust attack."

For a period, attackers continuously sent thousands of very small Bitcoin transactions (for example, UTXOs slightly above the dust transaction threshold of 546 satoshis) to the exchange's hot wallet deposit address.

When ordinary users initiated withdrawals, the exchange's wallet system would automatically grab these fragmented UTXOs as transaction inputs, thus constructing an "overly bloated" transaction. However, since the miner fee was fixed, these withdrawal transactions got stuck.

I speculated that this might have been a malicious competitive tactic within the industry at that time.

In fact, such incidents of using off-chain wallets to consolidate fragmented coins as "attacks" were quite common in the early days of the industry. Nowadays, exchanges have technically prohibited such attacks, for instance, they no longer allow miners to withdraw directly to exchanges. Now, the withdrawal systems of exchanges also support dynamic adjustments of miner fees based on transaction size.

Ultimately, due to the urgent need for these funds, I had to dig into my own pocket, contact a mining pool, and pay a hefty fee to "rescue" this transaction. Looking back, that was indeed a lot of money, damn it.

"Culture of Kindness" and "Cunning Conspiracy"

There is an unwritten "culture of kindness" in the Bitcoin mining pool community: when they package a block that includes a transaction with an unusually high miner fee, most mining pools often choose to return this "windfall" to the sender.

Such occurrences are not uncommon in the history of the crypto world. The earliest case I remember dates back to around 2013, when the famous "GHash.io" mining pool refunded a user a massive amount of abnormal miner fees.

Since then, it seems that similar news has emerged almost every year. Mining pools did not view this unexpected windfall as profit to be divided but actively contacted the mistaken users to return the funds.

In a world where the crypto space recognizes money but not people, the Bitcoin mining pool community is still quite kind.

However, this seemingly "kind" mechanism can also be exploited by those with ulterior motives, becoming a clever "mixing" strategy.

The miner fee for a Bitcoin transaction equals its total inputs minus total outputs. This fee ultimately becomes part of the block reward, packaged into the Coinbase transaction of that block. The Coinbase transaction is the first transaction of a block, which has no conventional inputs and is "created out of thin air" by miners to reward themselves. This means that once your funds enter the Coinbase transaction in the form of miner fees, all previous historical records are severed.

Suppose you have Bitcoin in an address that has been marked as "dirty money" by law enforcement; how would you clean it? You could construct a special transaction: the input is 1 BTC from this "dirty money" address, but the output address only receives 0.001 BTC. Thus, the difference of 0.999 BTC becomes the miner fee. Once a mining pool packages this transaction, the 0.999 BTC merges into that pool's Coinbase reward, completely severing it from its past history.

Next, you just need to contact this mining pool, negotiate a commission rate, and have them send this "clean" Bitcoin reward to your designated new address. The entire process is seamless, completing a clever money laundering operation.

Extreme Moments in History: Those Jaw-Dropping Transactions

Looking back at the long history of Bitcoin, there are always some extreme transaction records that we find fascinating:

The highest miner fee in history: On December 12, 2011, a transaction with txid:1d7749c65c90c32f5e2c036217a2574f3f4403da39174626b246eefa620b58d9 made history. It sent out 207 Bitcoins, but the receiving address only got 35.77 BTC, with a staggering 171.79869184 BTC paid as miner fees. At today's prices, the value of this fee is nearly twenty million dollars.

The most "stingy" whale in history: In stark contrast, there was an astonishing transaction that transferred over 500,000 Bitcoins in one go, but the miner fee paid was zero. txid:044e32f5e01d70333fb84b744cb936bf49acab518282c111894b18bcf3a63c12.

This fabulously wealthy holder truly was a penny-pincher.

There are so many interesting stories in the crypto world, but unfortunately, there aren't many coins left, just stories.

Tomorrow, I will summarize the ETH version of gas stories.

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