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A lot of people are actually using Ethereum to chat

EDZ

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This is an anonymous public chat app with a "save forever" function

You know, it's not just robots and cryptic attackers fighting in the dark forest, it's also a lot of little stories that get overlooked. Blockchain can be used not only to deliver assets of economic value, but also anonymous public chat software with "permanence" capabilities. Do you remember "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on The brink of second Bailout for banks"?

This post from Etherscan's blog details the different forms of on-chain information input with a variety of interesting examples. BlockBeats translated the text:

On August 11, Poly Network was hacked on an unprecedented scale, stealing a total of $611 million. However, what is different is that the hacker not only stole a huge amount of money, but also sent and received messages via his own address, and had a continuous conversation with PolyNetwork. Moreover, he even attached his own thoughts during the attack in a self-answering way.

Ethereum users have always been able to communicate with the world and each other using their wallets in a variety of ways. We'll look at these in this article, and they are:

- Data input information (IDM)

- Non-standard IDM

-Authenticated signature

Data Entry Information (IDM)

IDM is a term we created to describe the information sent in the input data fields of Ethereum transactions. This field is primarily used to inform the blockchain of the details of a contract call in a transaction. Since the data is entered in hexadecimal format, we can decode it to know the specific function of the call.

Initial input information for Uniswap V2

Function parameters displayed when the same input information is decoded

However, if the hexadecimal data entered in this field is converted to UTF-8 encoding, it will be rendered as text.

V god announced the destruction of 90% of SHIBA tokens

Identifying which of the many transactions that take place daily in Ethereum are IDM can be challenging because transactions that contain contracts can be converted to UTF-8 codes, rendering the transaction information an unreadable jumble of gibberish. And those information type transactions may appear in the character format is not correct, resulting in part of the information is still garbled.

From the information we can identify, their uses can be divided into the following categories:

- Transaction receipts and notes

- Attribute description (in JSON format)

- Encrypted begging

- Advertising

- Communication dialogue

Transaction receipts and bills

Most of this information comes in the form of receipts or bills. When searching for common terms in IDM with a subset of addresses, receipts and tickets come up more often than any other term.

In the same way,BSC bridge in AnyswapThe address also reflects this. Anyswap treats the transaction hash of the user's deposit on BSC as IDM in ethereum transactions sent to the user, so that the user can view their deposit on BSC simply by copying and pasting the hash into BscScan.com.

Verify the information

Some addresses use IDM for information validation, and among them, there is even an ADDRESS that sends itself an IDM every day.

The inspection revealed that all idMs use a standard JSON format, which we assume is used for routine validation of registered smart contracts, although we cannot be certain.

"Encrypt" begging

It is safe to say that after the success of the poor Indian beggar begging for charity with the excuse of "save our family", no hot address or large property owner can escape the fate of begging. Here are some begging messages that some people sent to V god (Vb Address) :

V god! Please help me! Please lend me 60 ETH. I've lost $150,000 since I joined the coin circle, and I'm getting married soon. I'm from India and my dad has a heart attack and is about to have surgery and the medical bills are costing me everything and CORONAVIRUS is costing me my job, I know it sounds ridiculous but please help me V God!

If you want to get money, you have to create value for the other person first, and then you have a better chance. But whether the money is legal in this case is another matter.

Hanashiro. Eth alerted the hacker that its USDT had been frozen, and the hacker gave 13.37 eth as a thank you.

advertising

Instead of sending begging messages, some entrepreneurs send IDMs to popular addresses to promote their products. One address sent IDM spam to more than 150 other popular addresses in an attempt to drum up sponsorship under the banner "Troll Hunter -- the first tokenized 3D animated film", but the fundraising effort was not successful.

In addition to the above means, there is another way of "advertising" is to regularly publish product links in the address, and the product information is processed as IDM, so that these information can be captured by us. Folkspaper is an IDM that calls itself a "fast-growing newspaper curated by an online community" that sends links to articles.

Communication and dialogue

The idMS that are most interesting to us are the on-chain conversations, such as the "heart-warming" exchange between two MEV robot operators, which is a good example of IDM being used effectively.

Main idea of the above picture:

Robot 1: Hey buddy! We continue to fight like this, no one can earn money, or so, you don't argue with me, after every time I earn money are half of you!

Robot 2: This is the crypto world. How can I trust you? You need to figure out a way to convince me.

Robot 1: It's actually very simple, if you give up the next round of competition I will give you your half of the money, you will know whether I keep my word, then I will write a new contract for automatic execution, and THEN I will send you the source code for you to verify!

Robot 2: Ok, I won't argue with you next time. Let me help you see if there are other competitors so we can split the bill. Gas!

Two online strangers who have never met each other, and are also competitors of arbitrage, can turn enemy into friend and establish a friendly partnership in just 30 pieces of information exchange, so as to ensure better profit for both parties.

By far the most active and interesting dialogue is still the one that involves PolyNetwork Exploiter. The conversation includes everything from 13.37ETH for good advice, to nurses and refugees requesting funds, to encryption of messages, to emails and media that uncover scammers, to negotiations and hacking. A, wait.

Above, a hacker. A link

Non-standard IDM

While most IDMs are simply sent as text, some require information decoding to complete.

Encrypted information

This information combines the public nature of blockchain with the privacy of encrypted information itself, so that those who want to understand the content of information must decrypt it to access it.

Above, an encrypted message sent to a PolyNetwork attacker

The event log

In the second THORChain exploitation event, the attacker sends the target information that needs to be parsed through the event log containing six transactions and converted from a hexadecimal to text view of the data entered line by line. So, TO future DeFi attackers, please stick to the standard IDM approach.

Six pieces of information in a block: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

byte

In addition, data is rendered in bytes by converting it to UTF-8 encoding, which is also a kind of non-standard IDM. To read this information, one needs to use a tool that converts the data text from byte format to string format.

IDM looks like a long string of numbers, but miraculously it can be read.

One of the founders of Meme NFT pitched his project to God V.

Authenticated signature

Another type of information is not stored on the chain, although ethereum is required. The wallet user can sign a message with a private key to prove that the message came from the signed address. After that, anyone else can verify the signature information using tools on Etherscan and Mycrypto.

After verification with platform tools, Etherscan keeps a record of the signature information. While these tools were originally intended to allow contract creators to verify ownership of their contracts, they have since become more widely used by thousands of people for other things.

Why would a user choose to use authenticated signature information instead of IDM? For one thing, the information isn't tied to the receiving address, so you can just log on to Etherscan's verification signature page and see the list of information that contains the information without having to navigate to another address. Users get a more intuitive reading experience without having to spend time converting hexadecimal to UTF-8 encoding. More importantly, there will be no transaction costs associated with using IDM.

Looking at this information, they are not used in the same way as IDM:

- 30 percent of that information is used to verify accounts on social media.

(Note: For those who want to tag addresses with common names by verifying account information, Etherscan will need to look at links to signed information on social accounts to verify both parties.)

- 29% of messages were not in Etherscan's format, but in a different format that verifies address ownership.

- Only 9% of messages are written strictly using the templates in Etherscan.

- Interestingly, as much as 1% of information is used for delivery of goods in express business.

In addition to the above uses, there are several interesting uses for this information:

- Seek help from the exchange

- Issue smart contract licenses

- Seek P2P loans on Bitcointalk

- Declare the correct Twitter account for the DeFi project

- Vote on Uniswap governance

- Financial audit verification

- Corrects incorrectly sent USDT

... Finally, let's look at a love letter "Love letter".

I gave up everything for you, I love you! I won't repeat myself! Have you ever seen me, should I continue to wait for you!

Because of its Turing completeness, Ethereum can be used not only for DeFi and NFT, but also in a variety of ways, one of which is for messaging. At present, this function of Ethereum has not been further explored, the development space is still huge, expect it to play a greater value in the future.