A crypto wallet belonging to trading platform Binance has spent 530 Ether (ETH), worth around $843,797, in gas fees in just 24 hours, according to blockchain data explorer Etherscan.
On Sept. 21, gas fees on the Ethereum network went from a minimum of 6 gwei, which is around $0.17, up to a maximum of 332 gwei, which is around $11.2, per transaction. The spike in gas prices was attributed to a wallet belonging to Binance called “Binance 14,” which spent almost $1 million on ETH network gas prices.
Members of the community expressed their opinions on the huge gas fees spent by the exchange. Web3 investor Belinda Zhou described Binance engineers as “incapable,” and said that they’ve got the configuration wrong and set the gas allowance too high.
Adam Cochran, a partner at venture capital firm Cinneamhain Ventures, believes that the unusual gas fees were a result of substandard APIs. The executive criticized the exchange’s technology and shed doubt on its ability to keep “hundreds of billions in coins across multiple protocols” safe.
Meanwhile, Binance reportedly said that they were doing their wallet aggregation process when the gas fees were low to ensure the safety of user funds.
Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for comments but did not get an immediate response.
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Binance has constantly been on the radar of critics as it’s entangled in controversies amid its legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commissions. On Sept. 21, the crypto exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao refuted a report that he loaned $250 million from BAM Management, a firm that acts as the holding company of the exchanges’ US counterpart. According to Zhao, the loan was the other way around, with him lending the funds to the company.