High Gas Fees Alert: Binance Wallet Records $840,000 in Abnormal Ethereum Charges

The Ethereum (ETH) network experienced a surge of abnormally high gas fees on Thursday, with over 140,000 transactions directed to a wallet address labeled by Etherscan as “Binance 14.”

While the Ethereum network’s average gas fee hovered around 10 gwei, Binance’s transactions consistently paid fees exceeding 300 gwei, or around 30 times higher than what was needed.

300 gwei equals around $10.

The extraordinary expenditure resulted in a temporary spike in gas fees on the Ethereum network, with users incurring substantial costs for sending transactions.

Binance confirms ‘routine consolidation of ETH’

Binance has confirmed in a media statement that the transactions were initiated by them, calling it a “routine consolidation of ETH.”

“Any impact to gas prices was unintentional but quickly resolved,” a spokesperson for the exchange said.

In total, the transactions drained more than 530 ETH, equivalent to approximately $840,000 in gas fees, briefly making it the largest gas user on the Ethereum network.

Over the course of its lifetime, the wallet address is responsible for $95 million in transaction fees, including both inbound and outbound transactions.

Community reacts

The incident was widely shared among community members on X, with one user saying it was a consolidation “from long-inactive deposit addresses.”

Due to #Binance consolidating funds from long-inactive deposit addresses, the #Ethereum network is experiencing congestion, causing Gas fees to surge to 300 gwei.

Address:https://t.co/sdDEs8Okxb pic.twitter.com/9rq9SVww07

— Scopescan (@0xScopescan) September 21, 2023

Others also offered their take on the unusual transactions, with for instance Martin Köppelmann, co-founder of DeFi protocol Gnosis, suggesting that Binance is either using “a really inefficient script” or that “something fishy is going on.”

pic.twitter.com/6E73e7gBiC

— Martin Köppelmann 🦉💳 (@koeppelmann) September 21, 2023

Lastly, some community members blamed Binance’s wallet team for the glitch, calling the team’s engineers “incapable.”

“They will release a case report soon. And likely someone got fired,” the user added.

Just incapable engineers from the binance wallet team got the configuration wrong. The gas allowance was set too high.

— Belinda (@ciaobelindazhou) September 21, 2023