Users on Scroll, an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network, paid more than $50,000 in additional transaction fees for about four days after the team behind the project repeatedly increased the parameters that determine how much users pay for posting data on Ethereum, according to an analysis published by L2BEAT.
The overcharge resulted from six manual increases to two rate multipliers on Scroll’s gas price oracle, the smart contract that calculates the layer 1 data portion of each transaction’s cost. Each update increased the previous value by 2x to 10x, which stood at 1,280x the original baseline on April 5, according to L2BEAT. On April 9, the team reduced both multipliers by 160x.
The base fee for all approximately 139,000 transactions involved would have been just $280. Instead, users collectively paid more than $50,000, with automated bots accounting for the vast majority.
Scroll has not publicly discussed the findings at the time of writing.
Etherfi Cash bots, which are still active during the protocol’s ongoing migration to Optimism, accounted for approximately $35,000, or 66% of the surplus, per L2BEAT. Scroll’s own oracle relay paid about $5,200, while LayerZero, Succinct and other bots covered the rest.
The problem was first noticed by a pseudonymous developer running a Succinct relayer, who posted on X that their transaction fees had increased from $0.002 to over $20.
“Scroll subsidized L1 DA costs and now adjusts to sustainable prices?” the developer asked. “And there are no users on Scroll except us, so we pay full price for it?”
Crypto research firm Kairos Research noted that the spike in fees seemed to coincide with the migration from etherfi to optimism. When etherfi was Scroll’s dominant app, total daily transaction fees for its products averaged about $250. After the multiplier increases started on March 31, that figure rose to about $16,000 per day.
L2BEAT clarified that the additional costs were not a sequencer issue, as the L1 gas prices reported by the oracle were accurate. The entire additional cost came from the multiplier increases, which were through a separate governance path involving the team’s multisig wallet.
The episode raises questions about whether Scroll had set below-cost rates to retain users, a common practice among L2s competing for activity, and abruptly adjusted after its largest fee contributor left.
The total value of Scroll (TVL) is just $24 million, according to DeFiLlama, down 96% from its peak of $585 million in October 2024.
This article was written using AI workflows. All of our stories are curated, edited, and fact-checked by a human.