Co-founder of Ethereum Jeffrey Wilcke sold 92K ETH and in the process doxxed himself due to the underlying Ethereum Name service domain. The transaction is said to be worth over eleven million dollars ($11M). The issue of revealing a person’s identity with Ethereum Name Service is getting popular, and now with Jeffrey Wilcke case, it will get more prominent.
On 25th December 2019, Kraken reported that close to 92,000 ETH was received from an ETH Foundation dev wallet. These ETH were from the Ethereum’s ICO stage belonging to the pre-mine era.
Jeffrey Wilcke sold 92K ETH only to be doxxed by Ethereum Name Service
The transaction was traced back to its Ethereum Name Service domain. Interestingly, this service was popularized by the very ETH founders. It allows the long wallet addresses to be converted into easy-to-remember names. Unfortunately, the same technology worked to bust his privacy during his latest transaction.
The controversy surrounding ENS is now gaining massive proportions. Currently, Ethereum holders link their .eth domains with their social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook. If not careful, it can compromise their privacy and reveal their wallet addresses. Considering a top-level Ethereum developer messed up in such a manner, so can anyone.
Once Jeffrey Wilcke sold 92K ETH yesterday, the public backlash started immediately. Twitter users started their criticism, saying such a huge payout for the co-founders can also represent abandoning of the project. Some said that initial owners did very less work compared to the latter ones who are being paid much less. Many even asked him to use the money to help the ETH community.
Jeffrey worked with Mihai Alisie, Vitalik Buterin and other co-founders during the early days of ETH. He is known to have co-developed Geth, an Ethereum client. Like all early birds, all the co-founders have been rewarded handsomely. When Jeffrey Wilcke sold 92K ETH yesterday, the sale did not have any immediate impact on the ETH prices.
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