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Behind the money-burning behavior of nd4.eth: Speculating on its mysterious identity and motives

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Speculations about the identity behind nd4.eth include cheating on his girlfriend, internal strife among OTC acceptors, etc.

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Original author: Haotian

The mysterious nd4.eth address can be said to have pioneered on-chain performance art.

On July 26th, 2500 ETH were burned, and on August 10th, 1BAYC, 1MAYC, and 1BAKC were burned, with a total value of nearly $5 million.

This kind of shocking money-burning art has not only triggered a begging show throughout the entire chain. Within two days, nearly 300 on-chain addresses begged for it. There were also more than ten fraudsters who impersonated the nd4.eth ID, deceiving users to participate in Twitter airdrops, on-chain coin issuance, and liquidity injection.

So, what are the other related addresses for nd4.eth? How much assets are involved and could be burned? And what is the true identity behind nd4.eth? Is it really just as simple as being betrayed by a girlfriend as rumored on the internet?

1. Through on-chain screening, it was initially discovered that the following addresses are highly related to nd4.eth (with large transfers back and forth) and are likely controlled by the same person: endit.eth, enditall.eth, noth.eth, blackholefaller.eth, ndnow.eth;

2. The current total asset balance of the above addresses is approximately 3.7 million US dollars, mainly consisting of assets pledged by nd4.eth on GMX, GNS, gTrade, and ApeStake; NFT balance includes 1 CryptoPunk #5237, 1 MAYC #3573, 1 BAYC #71, and 1 BAYC #289, worth about 250,000 US dollars;

That is to say, the "burning money" artist still has about 3.95 million US dollars to burn as of now (not fully counted).

3. Regarding the 0x0xdEAD000000000000000042069420694206942069 transferred to nd4.eth, there is currently a lot of controversy about whether it is a black hole problem. This address is composed of four cycles of DEAD +0000000000000000+42069, and has a strong hacker culture connotation. The fair statement is that it is not a black hole, but rather an address with a matching public and private key that is almost impossible to calculate with current technology. Therefore, some projects or individuals use it as a destruction address, such as SHIB. (There is no need to argue about this issue. Theoretically, there is a probability of calculation, but unless you go to calculate or can prove that the address has been calculated, this is the same as proving that Satoshi Nakamoto's private key still exists).

4. Some speculations about the behind-the-scenes identity of nd4.eth:

1. Girlfriend's infidelity: Currently, the mainstream view is this, but observant friends will notice several details: end it, end it all, nothing, blackhole, and other multiple domain names of the artist suggest a state of nothingness, emptiness, and ending everything. A year ago, he also had an NFT called Blackhole2, which clearly does not seem like an impulsive act in response to a recent girlfriend's infidelity, but more like a "performance art" with long-term planning and plotting.

2. Analyze the multi-layer interactive traces of on-chain addresses (as shown in the figure) to discover that the upstream address of nd4.eth, enditall.eth, received a large transfer of 2285 ETH marked as Union chain on January 18, 2023. What is the reason for this address? There is a certain regularity in the asset flow of this address: large amounts of eth are received in increments of 100-600, and then dispersed in small amounts. The transaction volume of on-chain txs is very large. Based on this, there are three possibilities:

1) An OTC financial service provided by HitBTC? The majority of deposits to this address come from the hot wallet of HitBTC, a veteran exchange, with amounts mostly in whole numbers of 100 ETH or more. After receiving the funds, the address frequently distributes small amounts of funds, ranging from 0.01 to 8 ETH, to other addresses such as the Payout contract (a batch payment settlement contract). This behavior resembles a form of financial management, but not quite.

2) Similar to Changenow, there are OTC service providers that do not require KYC. This is a centralized asset exchange platform where users can purchase assets using fiat currency and other OTC methods. The platform then aggregates the assets into a hot wallet based on the user's purchase needs and delivers small amounts of assets to the user. This possibility is quite high.

3) A "water house" money laundering organization on the chain, because the pattern of large amounts of money being deposited and small amounts being dispersed and withdrawn is very similar to the behavior of money laundering operations. Moreover, observing the website of this address gives a strong sense of a Ponzi scheme, and the business it does is expert-level investment services to help users make crypto transactions. Its BTC address has already received over 50,000 BTC. There is also a possibility that there is a money laundering organization behind it.

Thinking along this logic is a bit scary, because nd4.eth is a big shot with mysterious asset sources, and most of their assets come from depositing on their own exchange. The biggest asset association is Union chain, and it's hard to say there isn't some subtle relationship. Of course, we won't draw any conclusions here. It's up to the blockchain detectives to judge for themselves, or just enjoy listening to a suspenseful story.

5. The problem is, even if the above speculations are true, the direct evidence for the on-chain large-scale destruction cannot be proven. Further speculations can be made, such as: OTC acceptance merchant service or internal conflicts within money laundering groups, or a marketing campaign comparable to the Buffett lunch on the chain, or a last-ditch resistance to judicial supervision...blah blah.

I'm not good at writing scripts to solve crimes, but I can make people laugh. I'd rather believe that money can be spent recklessly, especially when it comes to fast money that seems to fall from the sky!

Done.

The above story is purely fictional. Even if you think it's all nonsense, it's not a bad idea to learn a little about on-chain data analysis.

note: Anti-fraud reminder, currently there are a large number of nd4.eth IDs appearing in Twitter searches, as well as contracts that appear to transfer large amounts of ERC20 counterfeit tokens to other addresses and add liquidity, all of which are phishing scams.