Crypto exchange Bitfinex completed a highly consequential transaction on Sept. 27 when sending $100,000 of the stablecoin Tether (USDT) to the layer-2 subsidiary platform DeversiFi. For reasons unknown, the exchange paid 7,676 ETH, equivalent to $23.7 million, marking quite possibly the largest gas fee ever recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to blockchain data from EtherScan, the deposit transaction was initiated at 11:10 UTC this morning from Bitfinex’s second-largest wallet, via a second address, to the wallet of DeversiFi. The transaction carried an “erroneously high gas fee”, even though DeversiFi promotes a service to “avoid gas costs and frustration, saving you time and money with every trade or swap.”