Top crypto firms join hands for a community-powered scam reporting platform

  • Chainabuse empowers anyone in the community to report scams or other fraudulent activities in the crypto space.
  • Players like Solana Foundation, Circle, TRM Labs, Hedera, the Aave Companies, Binance.us, and Civic are contributors to the scam reporting platform.

One of the biggest worries for investors in the crypto space is being victims of the scams taking place in the crypto space. Although the crypto industry has grown fast in terms of the user base, scams of different magnitude continue to hit the market. A recent example is cybercriminals hacking Beeple’s Twitter account in an NFT phishing scam.

Top firms from the crypto industry have joined hands by launching a new community-powered scam reporting platform, Chainabuse. The participants include popular names like Solana Foundation, Circle, TRM Labs, Hedera, the Aave Companies, Binance.us, and Civic.

The power of any given industry lies in the power of its community. Thus, big players coming together to fight the bad actors is a much more prudent step. Blockchain Intelligence firm TRM Labs shall be operating the scam reporting platform Chainabuse.

The platform will empower anyone in the crypto economy to warn others about the scam. Besides, it will also report any other hacks or fraudulent activities, as they encounter them. The official announcement notes:

The free tool enables crypto users, victims of financial crimes, and crypto businesses to take an active role in making the crypto ecosystem a safer place to operate.

Swift reporting of probable scams

One of the biggest challenges with reporting crypto scams is the timing. Chainabuse will facilitate swift reporting of such incidents. At present, users can file reports under Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Tron. Other users on Chainabuse can either upvote or downvote the report. Besides, they can also leave any important comments and contribute additional information. The announcement notes:

Reports on the same addresses or entities are consolidated and housed in a searchable database, which anyone can use to proactively check addresses or projects before engaging with them.

Currently, there are more than 620 reports of scams, seen on the Chainabuse platform. Out of these, more than 100 scams are just related to Ukraine’s crypto fundraising campaigns.

Chainabuse said that its job is to just alert users of the possible scams. It doesn’t file any reports with law enforcement on behalf of the users. But the FAQs page on Chainabuse reads:

Filing a report on Chainabuse may help surface multiple victims of the same scam and provides victims the ability to opt in to contact from law enforcement. We encourage all victims of cryptocurrency exploits to consider filing a report with the FBI’s IC3, Europol or the relevant law enforcement agency in their jurisdiction.