An unlucky trader paid 31.22 ETH, equivalent to $112,745, while trading on the DeFi platform PulseChain.
Whale Alert shared the news first on X (formerly Twitter), and the transaction happened around 14 hours ago when ETH was trading at $3,611.56.
💸 A fee of 31 #ETH (112,745 USD) has just been paid for a single transaction!https://t.co/kmsSPDfdy9
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 18, 2025
The trader attempts to get a refund
The unlucky trader reached out to the Ethereum validator named TitanBuilder through on-chain messages. These blockchain messages are viewable on the Ethereum network.
In the message, the trader wrote to the gas fees recipient, “Help! Some buggy wallet sent this transaction on Ethereum instead of Pulsechain, can you please send me back the super-high fee 31.22ETH this mistake has caused? please it is a huge amount of money to me.”
The trader stated that his wallet is buggy, causing the transaction to be processed on the Ethereum network instead of the PulseChain network. Since PulseChain utilizes the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the transaction is valid on both PulseChain and Ethereum.
Such a human error happens because the trader has to choose between paying the fees in ETH or the network’s native coin. In this case, it’s PulseChain’s native coin, PLS, which is trading at $0.00003014, based on data from CoinGecko. Ether, on the other hand, is trading at $3,525.88.
Conor Grogan, a Director at Coinbase, took to X and urged the Ethereum validator TitanBuilder to return the funds to the trader. He wrote, “Do this poor guy a solid and farm some good karma.” Grogan also stated that the 31 Ether coins were transferred to a crypto exchange wallet, which seems to be an automated transaction.
Grogan stated on X that he spends his free time helping users find their lost funds or unclaimed airdrops. Last month, Grogan said that over the past few years, he has helped more than 50 people recover over $10 million in lost Ether or unclaimed airdrops. He also managed to recover more than $3 million belonging to the crypto exchange Gate.
Four hours ago, Ethereum validator TitanBuilder refunded the trader and sent him 29.5295 ETH, equivalent to $103,511.61. The validator wrote on X “We have refunded 100% of the block profit back to the user.”
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