On February 14, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams warned the cryptocurrency community on social media platform X about a new strategy of crypto thieves who imitate Ethereum wallet addresses to defraud unsuspecting investors. Here’s how this new crypto scam works.
Uniswap Founder Issues Warning on His ETH Wallet Impersonation Scam
Adams explained that scammers were replicating legitimate wallet addresses as an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) address with a .eth extension. This means a scammer could register a wallet address that looks exactly like the legitimate address.
This is a major issue as certain cryptocurrency platforms may display the criminal’s wallet address as the top result over the legitimate one due to their similarity. Unfortunately, many investors may fall victim to sending their assets to a scammer’s address rather than the intended recipient.
Uniswap founder warns community about ENS wallet impersonation scam https://t.co/jTvdNbSLfm pic.twitter.com/6CJwY4emEs
— Blockchain Italia (@blockchainitaly) February 14, 2024
Meanwhile, Adams has called on crypto wallet platforms and other services to caution them about the type of attack. He called on the platforms to screen out ENS addresses that are exact replicas of standard crypto wallet addresses and to avoid autocompleting ENS addresses.
Ethereum wallet manager MyCrypto creator Taylor Monahan added her thoughts on the issues raised by Adams.
Monahan highlighted in a post that this particular scam tactic had previously been used during the early days of MyEtherWallet.
She added that this caused disruptions in registrations and resolutions for names starting with “0x.”
The Ethereum Name Service is a decentralized domain name provider built on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to replace long and complex wallet addresses with human-readable names, enhancing accessibility and usability within the Ethereum ecosystem. The service is quite popular among developers and investors.
Rising Crypto Scams Are Still a Problem for the Sector
While impersonation scams are not a novel concept in the online world, they are gradually becoming a key component of the toolkit of crypto criminals.
These scammers impersonate reputable figures or organizations to bilk unsuspecting investors off their money. According to Chainalysis, the total cash value obtained by illicit cryptocurrency addresses amounted to $24.2 billion in 2023.
Earlier this year, MicroStrategy boss Michael Saylor acknowledged the persistent issue of dealing with impersonation scams.
In an X post, he revealed his team’s relentless efforts to remove deep fake videos of himself. According to Saylor, his team has had to remove around 80 of these AI-generated scam videos that promise to double the victim’s money once they scan a barcode.