THELOGICALINDIAN - Etherscans ETH Protect apparatus may be accessible for new users acquisitive to abstain crypto hucksters but it could be added ambiguous for Ethers fungibility
Ethereum blockchain charlatan Etherscan has launched a new tool, called “ETH Protect.” The apparatus marks addresses with attenuated funds and allows users to analyze if any funds they accept accustomed are associated with hacks, scams, or attenuated Ether addresses.
This is both a benefaction and a affliction for the Ethereum network.
Safeguarding Users from Tainted Ether Addresses
Malicious action in crypto has apparent an uptick, consistent in a charge for appearance that clue the addresses of hackers and betray artists to ensure they don’t profit.
EtherScan’s latest affection gives users the adeptness to clue admission funds and their history to ensure the outputs are clean.
If an abode has been apparent as tainted, and the buyer of said abode believes they were abominably apparent as such, they can contact EtherScan to boldness the issue.
The aggregation clarified that there is additionally an congenital ambit breaker for privacy-enhancing mixers. When acclimated in affiliation with ETH Protect, addresses will not be flagged as tainted.
Blockchain sleuths like Chainalysis already accept a ample database of addresses operated by the perpetrators of above exploits. However, they go a footfall added in tracking bottomward addresses associated with the darknet for law administration authorities.
Cause for Concern
This feature, while benign for alienated acquaintance with bad-natured entities, additionally threatens the fungibility of ETH.
Fungibility is an economics appellation which states that one assemblage of annual of a article is changeable with any added assemblage of annual of the aforementioned commodity. It indicates that one American dollar equals one American dollar no amount what that dollar has anytime been acclimated for.
But if there is one set of “clean ETH” and addition set of “tainted ETH,” the affiance of badge fungibility is acutely eroded. Bitcoin faced a agnate botheration back Chainalysis started to track bottomward attenuated funds and exchanges blacklisted them.
While this is a all-important evil, it creates a deluge of added problems.
Nobody wants to end up on a accessible banish for accepting funds associated with an barter drudge or a above Ponzi arrangement like PlusToken.
Unlike the cyberbanking system, these attenuated funds cannot be blocked absolutely – they can alone be identified. If a PlusToken abode beatific a negligible bulk of Ether to 100,000 altered addresses, all of those addresses would potentially be apparent as tainted.
EtherScan’s resolution action is handled by aegis analysts and not an automatic interface. As a result, it can booty weeks, maybe months, for them to bright all these absent addresses of any atrocity if such a bearings were to occur.
I anticipate this is reasonable. People who aren't experts charge epistemic aids to acquaint about scams; we don't appetite an unmediated advice environment, we appetite a *competitively mediated* advice environment.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 14, 2020
However, amid the supporters of this affection is Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who believes that it is all-important to accumulate new users safe from betray artists.
