Related papers: Tracking Counterfeit Cryptocurrency End-to-end
Fraud across the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem is growing, with victims losing billions to DeFi scams every year. However, there is a disconnect between the reported value of these scams and associated legal prosecutions. We use…
As the largest blockchain platform that supports smart contracts, Ethereum has developed with an incredible speed. Yet due to the anonymity of blockchain, the popularity of Ethereum has fostered the emergence of various illegal activities…
The Ethereum blockchain network is a decentralized platform enabling smart contract execution and transactions of Ether (ETH) [1], its designated cryptocurrency. Ethereum is the second most popular cryptocurrency with a market cap of more…
This thesis presents techniques to investigate transactions in uncharted cryptocurrencies and services. Cryptocurrencies are used to securely send payments online. Payments via the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, use pseudonymous addresses…
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), digital certificates of ownership for virtual art, have until recently been traded on a highly lucrative and speculative market. Yet, an emergence of misconceptions, along with a sustained market downtime, are…
Cryptocurrencies (or digital tokens, digital currencies, e.g., BTC, ETH, XRP, NEO) have been rapidly gaining ground in use, value, and understanding among the public, bringing astonishing profits to investors. Unlike other money and banking…
Blockchain technology, which has been known by mostly small technological circles up until recently, is bursting throughout the globe, with a potential economic and social impact that could fundamentally alter traditional financial and…
In recent years, a more advanced form of phishing has arisen on Ethereum, surpassing early-stage, simple transaction phishing. This new form, which we refer to as payload-based transaction phishing (PTXPHISH), manipulates smart contract…
Blockchain technology has been successfully exploited for deploying new economic applications. However, it has started arousing the interest of malicious actors who deliver scams to deceive honest users and to gain economic advantages.…
The decentralization, redundancy, and pseudo-anonymity features have made permission-less public blockchain platforms attractive for adoption as technology platforms for cryptocurrencies. However, such adoption has enabled cybercriminals to…
Since Bitcoin appeared in 2009, over 6,000 different cryptocurrency projects have followed. The cryptocurrency world may be the only technology where a massive number of competitors offer similar services yet claim unique benefits,…
Interest in cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed since their introduction a decade ago, with hundreds of billions of dollars now invested across a landscape of thousands of different cryptocurrencies. While there is significant diversity, there…
Ponzi schemes are financial frauds which lure users under the promise of high profits. Actually, users are repaid only with the investments of new users joining the scheme: consequently, a Ponzi scheme implodes soon after users stop joining…
Identifying reputable Ethereum projects remains a critical challenge within the expanding blockchain ecosystem. The ability to distinguish between legitimate initiatives and potentially fraudulent schemes is non-trivial. This work presents…
This paper provides an overview of how crypto currency and blockchain engineering interacts with the law enforcement. We point out that a large proportion of crypto users are amateur investors and the dominant and the largest segment in…
In many blockchains, e.g., Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the primary representation used for wallet addresses is a hardly memorable 40-digit hexadecimal string. As a result, users often select addresses from their recent transaction…
Counterfeits harm consumers, governments, and intellectual property holders. They accounted for 3.3% of worldwide trades in 2016, having an estimated value of $509 billion in the same year. While estimations are mostly based on border…
Crypto Currencies have recently gained enormous popularity amongst the general public. With each passing day, more and more companies are radically accepting crypto cur-rencies in their payment systems, paving way for an economic…
Utilizing graph analytics and learning has proven to be an effective method for exploring aspects of crypto economics such as network effects, decentralization, tokenomics, and fraud detection. However, the majority of existing research…
Over the past few years, there has been a growth in activity, public knowledge, and awareness of cryptocurrencies and related blockchain technology. As the industry has grown, there has also been an increase in scams looking to steal…