On-chain detective Specter: Insufficient evidence to attribute a certain address to the Ethereum Foundation wallet

Odaily reports: According to monitoring by on-chain detective Specter, 0x5CBC6299faB3320E7758ac97fd4CA45E5B72209 has been labeled as an Ethereum Foundation wallet and alleged to have sold ETH, but Specter believes the evidence for this attribution is insufficient. This address received 17,700 ETH and 10 million DAI, worth approximately $89 million, from 0xF39d30Fa570db7940e5b3A3e42694665A1449E4 in August 2025. 0xF39 had previously received ETH transferred from a verified Ethereum Foundation address: that foundation address transferred a total of 20,756 ETH in two transactions in December 2015, after which the funds were transferred to 0xF39 on May 31, 2017. Two hours later, 0xF39 used 20,522 ETH to participate in Brave Browser's Basic Attention Token (BAT) ICO, obtaining 131.3 million BAT, which it held for about a year before gradually selling; 109 million BAT were sold directly, yielding 84,300 ETH and $7.6 million in stablecoins. Subsequently, 0xF39 also participated in Compound lending, Maker collateral positions, liquidity provision, and DeFi activities such as UNI and CRV staking and yield farming, with a total of 3,425 transactions and 16,216 token transfer records. On-chain detective Specter stated that historical transaction links are insufficient to prove that the address is owned or controlled by the same entity, and reliable attribution requires more evidence, preferably supported by independent off-chain evidence. The Ethereum Foundation published an article in January 2016 disclosing the private sale of $650,000 worth of ETH to individuals and businesses.