Foundry USA Pool, the leading Bitcoin mining pool operator, has returned an accidentally overpaid transaction fee of 8.18 BTC (approximately $777,000) to its rightful owner. The incident occurred on December 19 during the mining of block 875475, where a user mistakenly paid a fee that was 91,127 times higher than required.
After detecting the error, Foundry promptly reached out to the sender and initiated the refund process following a thorough assessment. The company confirmed that the refund would not impact regular customer payouts, as their system automatically excludes the three highest and lowest transaction fees each day.
"We have received numerous messages from across the industry, and we want to extend our thanks to everyone who reached out on the user's behalf," Foundry stated in an official tweet. The company emphasized that each similar case would be evaluated individually.
This marks the second major fee refund in the cryptocurrency mining industry within recent months. In November 2023, competitor Antpool processed a $3 million refund after a user accidentally submitted 83 BTC as a transaction fee.
Foundry currently dominates the Bitcoin mining industry with a hash rate of 273.6 EH/s, representing approximately 38% of the market share. This positions them well ahead of their nearest competitor, Antpool, which operates at 146.7 EH/s with an 18% market share.
The fee return comes shortly after Foundry's recent organizational changes, which included a substantial workforce reduction affecting around 160-170 employees, primarily in non-core operations. Despite these changes, the company's mining pool operations have remained stable and continue to lead the industry.