An 11-year-old Ethereum wallet moved $4.6 million and dodged a scam set up in minutes
An Ethereum wallet dating to 2015 moved $4.6 million in ether Monday, avoiding a scam attempt that began within three minutes of its first-ever test payment.
The address, 0x7dDd57165c87A2707f025DCFC2508c09834759Bc, received its first ether in Ethereum's genesis block in July 2015 and accumulated 755 ETH in March 2016. It remained dormant until Monday when it made a 0.05 ETH test payment worth approximately $106 at 22:04 UTC to a new address starting 0x1321beb8 and ending 1A44. Blockchain tracker Whale Alert flagged the unusual activity.
Within three minutes of the test payment, the wallet began receiving numerous tiny transfers from addresses designed to look nearly identical to the one just used. Two addresses, one starting 0x13211f and the other 0x1321FB (both ending in 1A44), sent these 'dust' payments. Etherscan identified these as being funded by accounts tagged as 'Fake_Phishing,' with the busier address sending 43 such transfers.
Address Poisoning Scam
The scam technique, known as 'address poisoning,' exploits how wallet apps typically display only the first and last few characters of an address. Scammers create lookalike addresses and send small amounts to insert themselves into the target's transaction history. When the owner copies what appears to be the 'recent recipient' address for a larger transfer, funds go to the scammer instead.
The lookalike addresses were funded within minutes of the test payment, indicating bots monitor the blockchain for activity from large, dormant wallets. A test transfer often signals a larger payment is imminent. However, this owner avoided the trap and took an additional precaution by sending 0.01 ETH onward, with most returning three minutes later before completing the larger transfer.
Successful Transfer
At 22:42 UTC, 38 minutes after the initial test, the old wallet successfully transferred 2,154.94 ETH (approximately $4.6 million) to the correct 0x1321beb8 address, which now holds about 2,155 ETH. Address poisoning has become a significant issue on Ethereum, with Citi warning in January that such spam was inflating the network's transaction counts, with much of the new activity consisting of transfers worth less than $1.
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