Bitcoin Miner Foundry returns excess fee of 8.18 BTC after transaction error

Foundry USA Pool, the largest Bitcoin mining pool by hash rate, recently took steps to return a transaction fee of 8.18 BTC, worth approximately $777,000, that was accidentally overpaid.

The error occurred on December 19 during the mining of block 875475, which included a transaction with a fee 91,127 times higher than required.

Foundry Refunds Large Overpaid Bitcoin Fee

After recognizing the error, Foundry contacted the sender and refunded the excess fee after evaluation. In a statement to The MinerMag, the mining group assured that this refund did not affect the payments of its regular customers, stating that the payment system does not take into account the three highest and three lowest transaction fees each day.

His official tweet read:

“We have received numerous messages from across the industry and would like to thank everyone who has reached out on behalf of the user. Please note that this decision was made after extensive deliberation and we will continue to manage these instances case by case”.

This incident marks the second such event in recent months, following a similar action by Antpool in November 2023, when it had to refund a $3 million Bitcoin transaction fee after an error ‘user triggered the highest fee ever paid on the Bitcoin network.

As previously reported, the user mistakenly sent 83 BTC as a fee on November 23, after which the Bitcoin mining company temporarily froze the fee and announced its plan to verify the identity of the sender before issuing a refund.

Meanwhile, Foundry’s pool, with a massive hash rate of 273.6 EH/s, remains the industry’s largest, far surpassing Antpool’s 146.7 EH/s, according to data compiled by Hashrate Index . Additionally, Foundry controls nearly 38% of the market share among pool operators, while Antpool accounts for 18%, at the time of writing.

Foundry layoffs

The latest development comes less than a month after Foundry was reported to have laid off 60% of its workforce as part of its “realignment” strategy.

The layoffs at Foundry mostly affected employees outside of the company’s core operations. Originally employing 250 people, 20 were reassigned to Yuma, while 160 to 170 employees were laid off. This included all ASIC hardware and repair equipment, although mining pool operations were not affected. Foundry was also believed to be exploring the sale of its site operations team, which oversees Bitcoin mining locations.

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