Foundry USA Pool – the largest Bitcoin mining pool by hash rate – recently made headlines for returning an 8.18 BTC transaction fee, equivalent to roughly $777,000, that had been accidentally overpaid.
The incident took place on December 19 during the mining of block 875475, where a transaction with a fee 91,127 times higher than necessary was included.
Foundry USA Pool Refunds Excessive Bitcoin Fee
Upon discovering the error, Foundry promptly contacted the sender and refunded the excess fee after conducting a thorough assessment. The mining pool clarified that this refund did not impact the payouts of its regular customers, as the payout system excludes the three highest and three lowest transaction fees each day.
In an official statement, Foundry expressed its gratitude to the industry for their support and emphasized that such decisions are made after careful consideration, with each case being handled individually.
This incident follows a similar occurrence in November 2023, where Antpool had to refund a $3 million Bitcoin transaction fee due to a user error resulting in the highest-ever fee paid on the Bitcoin network.
Foundry’s pool boasts a significant hash rate of 273.6 EH/s, making it the largest in the industry compared to Antpool’s 146.7 EH/s. Currently, Foundry controls nearly 38% of the market share among pool operators, while Antpool holds 18%.
Foundry’s Workforce Realignment
Not long after the fee refund incident, Foundry faced internal changes with reports of a 60% reduction in its workforce as part of a realignment strategy.
The layoffs primarily impacted employees outside of the core operations, with around 160-170 staff being let go, while 20 were reassigned to Yuma. The ASIC repair and hardware teams were among those affected, although mining pool operations remained unaffected. There were also talks of Foundry exploring the sale of its site operations team responsible for overseeing Bitcoin mining locations.