A researcher at the Ethereum Foundation has revealed that the IP addresses of Ether stakers are monitored as part of a broader set of metadata, causing the cryptocurrency community to flag Ethereum for privacy concerns. In an April 12 interview on the crypto podcast Bankless, EF researcher Justin Drake revealed that he learned this information “internally” — presumably, at the foundation. The metadata Drake referred to is used to track a wide range of things, he explained: “There’s a lot of metadata, you can look at deposit addresses, you can look at withdrawal addresses, you can look at fee recipients, you can look at IP addresses.”
Drake’s comments appeared to have taken Bankless host Ryan Sean Adams by surprise. “So it’s a fairly Sybil resistant dataset of your most involved Ethereum citizens?” Adams asked. “Exactly,” Drake responded. The conversation was initiated when Drake predicted that “special airdrops” may become available for solo stakers — but not the industry heavyweights: “Then you can identify, okay, we know who Kraken is, we know who Coinbase is, and we can just not give them an airdrop if the purpose of the airdrop is to airdrop to specific individuals that are running solo validators.” The conversation caused a stir on Crypto Twitter.
Full story : Ethereum researcher says staking reveals IP address, sparking privacy concerns.
