ZachXBT「塌房」疑雲

Original author: Eric, Foresight News

ZachXBT, a person who insists on punishing evil and promoting good in the dark forest of Web3, playing the role of Gotham's Batman, has recently been suspected of having their real identity exposed.

A user with the X handle Matthew learned ZachXBT's name and location through the lawsuit documents filed by "Big Brother Machi" Huang Licheng against ZachXBT, and successfully found this "anonymous hero" through a local public database.

In June 2022, ZachXBT published a long-form Medium article detailing accusations against Huang Licheng for involvement in multiple "scam projects," including Mithril, Formosa Financial, Machi X, Cream Finance, Swag Finance, etc., and accused him of misappropriating approximately 22,000 ETH of project funds from Formosa Financial, accompanied by on-chain transaction data as evidence.

Huang believed these accusations severely damaged his reputation and caused financial losses, repeatedly requesting ZachXBT to delete or modify the article, but the other party did not comply. On June 16, 2023, Huang formally filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, demanding an apology and compensation. Huang stated that he only wanted an apology, and all compensation would be donated to charity.

It was in the documents of this lawsuit that Matthew found the clues: ZachXBT's real name is Zachary Wolk, residing in Kingsland, Texas.

Based on this information, Matthew found Zachary Wolk's information in a swimming competition database, confirming he was a swimmer at Vandegrift High School in Austin, Texas.

This public doxxing behavior has caused dissatisfaction among many. Some in the comments pointed out that after the relevant documents were released, interested parties had known ZachXBT's identity for a while, and choosing not to publicize it was a form of protection. Others suggested that since ZachXBT had tracked on-chain activities involving terrorist financing and North Korea's state-sponsored hacker group Lazarus Group, casually exposing their identity could put their life in danger.

In fact, exposing the identity is not the entirety of the post. As some users said, this public information can all be found; what Matthew truly wanted to express is that ZachXBT is not an "unassailable monolith."

Matthew stated that on May 7 this year, ZachXBT offered a $10,000 bounty for the capture of LAB founder Vova Sadkov. The bounty content explicitly required: "Passport or government-issued ID information," but in the United States, paying for someone else's passport information is illegal, punishable by up to 15 years in federal prison.

In February this year, ZachXBT publicly tweeted that they would launch a "major investigation" into one of the most profitable businesses in the cryptocurrency field. Polymarket even opened a "prediction" market for this event, with total trading volume reaching $40 million. But just a few hours before ZachXBT revealed the target of the investigation, 12 newly created addresses heavily bet on Axiom at low odds, profiting $1.2 million.

ZachXBT later responded to this matter, stating that they had contacted the Axiom team before the announcement, which may have led to a leak. Subsequently, ZachXBT stated they would not make such previews in the future.

Looking back in time, in January 2025, an anonymous developer airdropped 50% of the total supply (500 million tokens) of the ZACHXBT token to ZachXBT's address. ZachXBT then profited nearly $4 million by selling these tokens. ZachXBT stated that issuing a token with their name was done without their permission, and the sale was to protect their own reputation.

Obviously, Matthew felt this behavior had a certain sense of "eating the meat and then cursing the cook."

Finally, Matthew made a very subjective "criticism": ZachXBT has received donations from Changpeng Zhao, Justin Sun, Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, as well as from Optimism, Hyperliquid, Bybit, etc. Therefore, you have never seen ZachXBT expose negative events related to these donors.

Matthew stated that between December 2024 and January 2026, ZachXBT published negative investigations of Hyperliquid seven times. On January 18, 2026, Hyperliquid transferred 10,000 HYPE tokens to ZachXBT, after which ZachXBT never mentioned Hyperliquid again.

What Matthew did not mention is that ZachXBT had previously accused Binance of insider trading and market manipulation, but later became an official partner of BNB Chain in combating scams and tracking funds, which faced considerable criticism at the time.

Finally, Matthew posed a "soul-searching question" to ZachXBT's supporters: Don't create gods; the standards you apply to others should also apply to ZachXBT.

ZachXBT has indeed been mired in some controversy recently. In the past few months, ZachXBT has successively questioned the RAVE and LAB tokens, which saw short-term surges, alleging that both projects had highly concentrated token holdings and insider trading. Subsequently, as Matthew described, they offered a bounty for LAB founder's personal information.

Before these two incidents escalated, even if ZachXBT's actions were somewhat controversial, they were almost drowned out by supportive and understanding voices. However, this extreme behavior this time has sparked considerable opposition. Besides believing that publicly offering bounties for private information was "overstepping their bounds," many do not understand why ZachXBT, who previously spoke for retail investors, targeted two tokens that surged during a bear market. Their actions even caused a short-term price drop, ultimately leading to losses for many retail investors.

For many Web3 investors, the sharp fluctuations in small-cap tokens are not accidental; they have even become a research target for many investors, and insider trading is an unspoken rule in the industry. Therefore, many critics believe that ZachXBT's choice of these two targets may involve personal emotions, not acting selflessly as before.

In Matthew's eyes, ZachXBT has fallen from grace. Perhaps ZachXBT initially resolved to become an on-chain detective punishing evil and promoting good due to their own experiences of being scammed, but gradually, this original intention lost its purity. Whether tempted by interests or threatened by authority, there is indeed evidence that ZachXBT has become selective in their subjects of exposure.

Is a flawed hero still a hero? Judging from the comments, most people still give a positive answer. Many believe that no one is perfect; perhaps some exchanges of interest do exist, but they cannot overshadow the fact that ZachXBT once bravely stood up against injustice. After all, they are still on the front lines, which is better than remaining silent.