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Well wouldn't this be essentially be robbing the miners who are mining on their pool? My understanding of a pool's relationship with the mining utilizating their pool is that the pool is to distribute all of the mining revenue (including tx fees) to all of the miners with the amounts being distributed being based on the payout method. Just because someone makes a mistake in creating a transaction does not mean that the miners are not entitled to all of their income.
Although it is very clear in this case that the size of the TX fee was a mistake, it is difficult to draw the line between TX fee that is intended to get the transaction confirmed quickly and an erroneous transaction. As per the Bitcoin protocol the transaction was valid so IMO the sender should bear the cost of their mistake, be held accountable, and learn their lesson.
Well wouldn't this be essentially be robbing the miners who are mining on their pool? My understanding of a pool's relationship with the mining utilizating their pool is that the pool is to distribute all of the mining revenue (including tx fees) to all of the miners with the amounts being distributed being based on the payout method. Just because someone makes a mistake in creating a transaction does not mean that the miners are not entitled to all of their income.
Although it is very clear in this case that the size of the TX fee was a mistake, it is difficult to draw the line between TX fee that is intended to get the transaction confirmed quickly and an erroneous transaction. As per the Bitcoin protocol the transaction was valid so IMO the sender should bear the cost of their mistake, be held accountable, and learn their lesson.
Firstly this was not an user mistake. The user in question "uncovered" a bug the worst way possible, by having to face its problematic issues. According to reddit they have been issued a 25 BTC bug bounty on top of the returned payment. It apparently was an overflow[1] in the BitGo API.
Most pools act in a similar fashion when a mistake happens and yes this happens quite often. Several times a year I think. This is probably something pools should have in their ToS if they have any. I think its the morally correct thing to do and returning the fee is an overall win for BinMain, just see the reactions in this thread and how it affected their public stance. Now imagine they would have kept the funds. I think its very likely that many miners would have changed the pool even though they profited from the "mistake".
[1] https://np.reddit.com/comments/33u8vq//cqofrit
Wow! a 25 btc bounty ?
Now i feel like i should have been that guy but than again , i don't have that big amount anyway
