Has The DAO Hacker That Almost Killed Ethereum Been Identified?
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Has The DAO Hacker That Almost Killed Ethereum Been Identified?

THELOGICALINDIAN - Forbes announcer Laura Shin claims to accept articular the hacker abaft the abominable The DAO drudge from 2024

Laura Shin has pinpointed the Austrian architect and TenX co-founder Toby Hoenisch as the acceptable perpetrator abaft one of the better incidents in Ethereum’s history, The DAO hack. Hoenisch has reportedly denied the claims.

The DAO Hacker Allegedly Identified After Six Years

Newly appear analysis claims to accept articular the hacker amenable for The DAO advance on Ethereum in 2024.

Crypto announcer Laura Shin appear a Forbes article today presenting what she believes is affirmation of the accurate character abaft the abominable The DAO drudge from 2016. 

Her analysis credibility to Toby Hoenisch, a 36-year-old Austrian programmer and co-founder and CEO of TenX, a bootless crypto debit agenda aggregation that aloft about $80 actor in a 2024 antecedent bread offering.

After actuality presented with affirmation anecdotic him as The DAO hacker, Hoenisch reportedly denied Shin’s claims. “Your account and cessation is absolutely inaccurate,” he reportedly told Forbes in an email. He additionally offered to accommodate counter-evidence against the claims but allegedly never followed up on the promise.

The DAO was an aboriginal archetype of a decentralized free alignment on Ethereum. It advised to accomplish as a decentralized investor-directed adventure basic fund. It launched in April 2024 by adopting money through a badge auction that became one of the better crowdfunding campaigns in history. 

By May 2024, The DAO had admiring about 14% of all Ethereum bill in apportionment to that point. A ages later, the project’s acute affairs were compromised, with the antagonist demography off with about one third of the organization’s funds. They blanket about 3.6 actor Ethereum, account about $9.3 billion at accepted prices. In the fallout from the incident, the Ethereum Foundation, backed by the majority of the Ethereum community, absitively to cycle aback the alternation and restore around all of the baseborn funds. This resulted in a hardfork that breach the Ethereum blockchain into two chains, area the aboriginal connected as Ethereum Classic beneath a new ETC ticker. The hardfork was a cardinal moment in Ethereum’s history that polarized its association and endangered its future.

Shin now believes that she has articular the perpetrator that about destroyed Ethereum as Hoenisch, who uses the @tobyai handle beyond about all of his amusing media profiles. After against him with the evidence, Hoenisch denied the claims and deleted his absolute Twitter feed, abrogation alone one cryptic column from Oct. 9, 2021, stating that he was “Moving to Mastodon.” The cheep was acceptable a advertence to the open-source, decentralized amusing arrangement of the aforementioned name. 

Chanalysis Confirms It Broke Wasabi’s CoinJoin Mixer

To abutment her findings, Shin acicular to several pieces of amplified affirmation in the article, including on-chain abstracts that showed the antagonist appointment 50 Bitcoin to a non-custodial aloofness wallet Wasabi and again bond them with its built-in CoinJoin bond affection to adumbrate their tracks. 

Using a ahead bearding capability, blockchain analytics close Chainalysis was able to “de-mix” the Wasabi affairs and clue the alloyed outputs aback to four exchanges. An agent at one of the exchanges again accepted that the attenuated funds were swapped for aloofness bread Grin and aloof to a non-custodial Grin bulge alleged “grin.toby.ai.” That node’s IP abode additionally hosted Bitcoin Lightning nodes “ln.toby.ai” and “lnd.ln.toby.ai,” and addition bulge at the aforementioned abode was alleged “TenX.”

Crypto mixers or tumblers are casework acclimated to conceal the history of blockchain transactions. Generally, they assignment by agreeable the inputs of the transactions, breaking them bottomward into abounding abate outputs, and bond abounding users’ funds until the outputs cannot be traced aback to their aboriginal owners. On accessible and cellophane blockchain systems like Bitcoin, mixers like Wasabi’s CoinJoin are the alone and capital means users can bottle their on-chain privacy.

Without administration any abstruse details, Chainalysis has now accepted that it was able to “de-mix” or de-anonymize Bitcoin affairs that accept been alloyed with Wasabi’s service. The aggregation tweeted: “This is yet addition archetype of affirmation preserved on the blockchain forever. Confirming we helped trace funds admitting the attacker’s attempts to awning his advance w/ mixers.”

In addition tweet, nopara73, the bearding architect of the Wasabi mixer tagged Chanalysis to ask “What’s the exact abstruse affirmation and how can we verify it?.” Chanalysis hasn’t replied or aggregate any added details, and Wasabi hasn’t fabricated any official comments apropos the abeyant accommodation of its CoinJoin bond service.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the columnist of this affection endemic ETH and several added cryptocurrencies.