A little over a week ago, Giv asked us for some insight in the wallet drop-off noticed on the Harmony blockchain explorer.
Credit: potmo
After verifying that there were no data integrity issues we launched a bounty to our community to dive into this anomaly.
You can view submissions below:
- Transaction Comparer by ant
- Active Wallet Drop by ant
- Harmony Activity Drop by jackguy
- Harmony Lost Users by pinehearst
- Harmony Wallets by issui
- Harmony Mystery by potmo
The addresses that were boosting the active wallet metrics were only sending a single transaction. The consensus from these analysts is that there was a large drop off in addresses sending transactions, behavior indicative of potential bot activity.
Key Findings
- 99% of the new users on Harmony only performed 1 transaction
Credit: issui
- Active wallets were mostly comprised of new users performing their first and only transaction on Harmony
Credit: pinhearst
- Genuine users maintained relatively flat activity (active users excluding the below 0xded address)
Credit: ant
Additional findings, from the above linked reports:
- These new users (1tx users) were isolated in Harmony and were not found to have on-chain activity registered on Ethereum and Polygon
- The sharp decline in active wallets did not result in a decline of equal magnitude in users swapping and questing on DFK
- The findings indicate that majority of Harmony’s new users were bots and the growth observed was highly conflated for a period of time
- New metrics to identify organic users should be considered when examining user activity on-chain
Addresses of Interest
Credit: ant
0xdedb8ca3ae4707917e7b0fe55e99a6cd2892bc90 - created by 0x8709DC15D12a6fCA2827580E6dFD05C90b8B540b on 2022-04-11 which is a contract that appears to do nothing.
0x8709DC15D12a6fCA2827580E6dFD05C90b8B540b - (sub)
0xd8e0f0c3bf475ad11da74eeb7b06d23dfb3c590f - (main)
Sub, up until 2022-05-31 was receiving ONE from numerous accounts before sending it all to Main
From creation until late May, this 0xded address accounted for 75k plus transactions/day, until it abruptly suspended operations.
Credit: potmo
More information, explorer sleuth work, and on-chain analysis can be found in each of the above links.