Whales dispatched to support Eth 2.0, depositing 100,000 ETH to the deposit contract address in a single day

特邀专栏作者

2021-07-05 14:48 (UTC+8)

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According to the analysis, the 100,000 ETH inflow can be traced to a single Ethereum address and a wallet responsible for sending 258,000 ETH ($541.8 million) to the deposit contract.

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According to the analysis, the 100,000 ETH inflow can be traced to a single Ethereum address and a wallet responsible for sending 258,000 ETH ($541.8 million) to the deposit contract.

Crypto whales may be "shy" but intelligent creatures, but when you manage to catch a whale in action, it can be a spectacular sight — last week, for example, a single entity sent 100,000 via 133 different addresses. Deposit ETH into the Eth 2.0 deposit contract.

first level title

Looking for big whales who are super bullish on ETH and Eth 2.0

Given the relatively steady growth in the number of deposit contracts pledged since their launch in December, last week's unexpected surge suggested that a single entity was likely behind it. But can we prove it? Is it plausible to prove that an entity is behind an Eth 2.0 deposit worth 100,000 ETH?

Unfortunately, actually looking up transactions and addresses on-chain is not a simple quick lookup of "page one" information on Etherscan.

To get a quick conclusion, we first check the maximum amount of deposits made by a single address to the deposit contract. While this strategy did find an address that recently deposited ~12,800 ETH to the deposit contract over 400 transactions, unfortunately this is not the one we are interested in since the transaction date (June 20, 2021 ) is a few days earlier and the amount is only about 13% of the total 100,000 ETH, even in this case "only about 13%" is still more than $26.8 million (calculated at $2100 per ETH). Obviously, if the 100,000 ETH comes from a single entity, they are more cautious than directly depositing 100,000 ETH from an address.

A more in-depth analysis is required, so we downloaded and uploaded the deposit contract transactions from Etherscan to Excel as of June 22, 2021. The data is clear.

From the data pulled on June 22, 2021, a total of 1163 addresses deposited 32 ETH into the deposit contract, 133 addresses deposited 800 ETH into the deposit contract, and 11 addresses deposited 32 ETH into the deposit contract. Various other multiples of ETH.

For those unfamiliar, ETH 2.0 is a protocol change that Ethereum has been planning since its launch that will transform Ethereum from a proof-of-work network (PoW) to a proof-of-stake network (PoS). Proof-of-Stake validators will secure the network and earn ETH for it. A validator threshold is 32 ETH, which is currently obtained by sending 32 ETH to the deposit contract on the Ethereum mainnet (current proof-of-work chain).

Deposits are a one-way bridge, as users cannot get their full ETH including any interest earned until the network merges, which is currently unlikely to happen before late 2022.

On the same day, 800 ETH were deposited from 133 addresses, and we are increasingly convinced that the 100,000 ETH actually came from one address. To confirm this, there must be some similarity between the addresses. Sure enough, a quick look revealed that each address was funded by a common address.

A whale finally appeared in front of the eyes.

The message of this whale is starting to become clearer. Let's take a high-level look at how they perform operations:

In each new address, deposit 800 ETH into the deposit contract - 25 deposits of 32 ETH each. The remaining 10 ETH is used to pay for gas, and once the deposit is complete, the remaining ~9.86 ETH in each address will be sent to a public address. These funds are eventually sent to the deposit contract.
They laid the groundwork for their plan on June 16th with a random 100,000 ETH transaction ($210 million at $2100 per ETH). With such a large queue, the transaction is not eager to pass, and it finally takes 1 minute and 41 seconds to confirm. Gas prices that are "between standard and fast" convey a feeling of "well, I don't want to overpay for this transaction", which is understandable to most ordinary users using Ethereum, but more Surprising to come from such a mammoth whale.
They funded 133 new wallets with 810 ETH each for a total of 107,730 ETH in 8 minutes using 100,000 ETH from the new wallets.

Looking at the addresses funded by this 100,000 ETH, they have seen over 258,000 ETH ($541.8 million at $2,100 per ETH) flow through it, according to Nansen. Without hitting every address, it appears that all the ETH flowing through that address was funneled into the deposit contract in a similar fashion to the above - from a 90,000 ETH transaction on May 21st to a 49,990 ETH transaction on June 14th start.

The address shows no signs of slowing down, either. At the time of writing, the address has again received two injections of 6119 ETH and 792 ETH. According to their ostensible Michael Saylor “sell office furniture” mentality, the ETH will almost certainly flow into the deposit contract afterwards.

Looking at the 100,000 ETH transaction for this coin, it was funded from an OG Ethereum address that received funds from an address immediately before that, and Nansen shows that the entire 302,000 ETH has been received from a wallet , Nansen marks cryptocurrency lender Celsius.

Transactions on this questionable OG address date back to September 2016, check out their early ERC-20 transactions as a journey along the r/ethtrader mempool channel, including SPANK, KIN, FUN, OMG (airdrop - still unsold out) and a lot of SAI. They also receive regular deposits of BOND from a contract marked by Nansen as vesting, indicating that they were early team members or investors.

According to Nansen, their total activity was high with 1.72 million ETH flowing in and out. There are only so many OGs with this amount of cash and belief in Ethereum, and it doesn't look like they'll be shaken up anytime soon.