Somber days follow the life of one NFT user. On March 10, during a dire transaction error, NFT seller DinoDealer seemed to have confused WEI for ETH, costing him $1 million. 

The non-fungible token in question represents a popular EtherRock from an NFT pet rock collection that was launched in 2017. The rock was valued at 444 ether (Ethereum). At the time of writing, 1 Ethereum coin is worth roughly $2,800 which would place an approximate price tag of $1.2 million on the rock today.

In a cumbersome tweet, DinoDealer, aka “Rock Dust,” regrettably announced his inadvertent mishap. He started his post by greeting his followers, thoughtfully asking them how their week was going. 

“Mine? I just erroneously listed @etherrock #44 for 444 wei instead of 444 eth. Bot sniped it in the same block and trying to flip for 234 eth. In one click my entire net worth of $1 million dollars, gone.” He went on to implore, “Is there any hope? Am I GMI? Can snipers show mercy?”  

For reference, WEI refers to the smallest base unit of Ethereum, similar to how satoshis represent the smallest unit of Bitcoin. In this case, 444 wei is equivalent to $0.0012; not nearly reaching one penny. 

Bot snipers refer to automatic bid programs commonly used on auction sites such as eBay. Buyers can set up timely buy orders to the last second, and this is precisely what happened with his EtherRock. Popular freelance platform Upwork lists bot sniping tools for $200 that can be used for the OpeanSea NFT marketplace.

Whoever owned that bot tried to flip the NFT for 234 ether, which would give the new seller approximately $655,000. 

Due to the robust, immutable nature of a blockchain, transactions cannot be undone. This ensures every transaction on the network sustains its transparency, further enabling peer-to-peer trust.

And just like you can lose all your funds in a wallet by simply forgetting a string of random words, you can just as easily lose it all by clicking on the wrong keystroke button of a crypto transaction. 

On the bright side, at least DinoDealer got almost a penny out of this deal, so he didn’t technically lose everything. For further consolation, followers who expressed great concern to his misfortune offered to help out. 

DinoDealer seems to have bounced back from this episode, however, so not all hope is lost. He has even publicly provided the recipient address of the bot sniper.

Some people fall into a state of depression after losing $1 million; and others, like DinoDealer, prefer to create a new Twitter profile picture featuring sad rocks and one rock crossed out in red in an attempt to make light of the situation.