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Web3 has a metadata problem, and it’s not going away

Published

16 hours ago

March 16, 2025

Opinion by: Casey Ford, PhD, researcher at Nym Technologies

Web3 rolled in on the wave of decentralization. Decentralized applications (DApps) grew by 74% in 2024 and individual wallets by 485%, with total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) closing at a near-record high of $214 billion. The industry is also, however, heading straight for a state of capture if it does not wake up.

As Elon Musk has teased of placing the US Treasury on blockchain, however poorly thought out, the tides are turning as crypto is deregulated. But when they do, is Web3 ready to “protect [user] data,” as Musk surrogates pledge? If not, we’re all on the brink of a global data security crisis.

The crisis boils down to a vulnerability at the heart of the digital world: the metadata surveillance of all existing networks, even the decentralized ones of Web3. AI technologies are now at the foundation of surveillance systems and serve as accelerants. Anonymity networks offer a way out of this state of capture. But this must begin with metadata protections across the board.

Metadata is the new frontier of surveillance

Metadata is the overlooked raw material of AI surveillance. Compared to payload data, metadata is lightweight and thus easy to process en masse. Here, AI systems excel best. Aggregated metadata can reveal much more than encrypted contents: patterns of behaviors, networks of contacts, personal desires and, ultimately, predictability. And legally, it is unprotected in the way end-to-end (E2E) encrypted communications are now in some regions.

While metadata is a part of all digital assets, the metadata that leaks from E2E encrypted traffic exposes us and what we do: IPs, timing signatures, packet sizes, encryption formats and even wallet specifications. All of this is fully legible to adversaries surveilling a network. Blockchain transactions are no exception.

From piles of digital junk can emerge a goldmine of detailed records of everything we do. Metadata is our digital unconscious, and it is up for grabs for whatever machines can harvest it for profit.

The limits of blockchain

Protecting the metadata of transactions was an afterthought of blockchain technology. Crypto does not offer anonymity despite the reactionary association of the industry with illicit trade. It offers pseudonymity, the ability to hold tokens in a wallet with a chosen name.

Recent: How to tokenize real-world assets on Bitcoin

Harry Halpin and Ania Piotrowska have diagnosed the situation:

“[T]he public nature of Bitcoin’s ledger of transactions […] means anyone can observe the flow of coins. [P]seudonymous addresses do not provide any meaningful level of anonymity, since anyone can harvest the counterparty addresses of any given transaction and reconstruct the chain of transactions.”

As all chain transactions are public, anyone running a full node can have a panoptic view of chain activity. Further, metadata like IP addresses attached to pseudonymous wallets can be used to identify people’s locations and identities if tracking technologies are sophisticated enough.

This is the core problem of metadata surveillance in blockchain economics: Surveillance systems can effectively de-anonymize our financial traffic by any capable party.

Knowledge is also an insecurity

Knowledge is not just power, as the adage goes. It’s also the basis on which we are exploited and disempowered. There are at least three general metadata risks across Web3.

Fraud: Financial insecurity and surveillance are intrinsically linked. The most serious hacks, thefts or scams depend on accumulated knowledge about a target: their assets, transaction histories and who they are. DappRadar estimates a $1.3-billion loss due to “hacks and exploits” like phishing attacks in 2024 alone.

Leaks: The wallets that permit access to decentralized tokenomics rely on leaky centralized infrastructures. Studies of DApps and wallets have shown the prevalence of IP leaks: “The existing wallet infrastructure is not in favor of users’ privacy. Websites abuse wallets to fingerprint users online, and DApps and wallets leak the user’s wallet address to third parties.” Pseudonymity is pointless if people’s identities and patterns of transactions can be easily revealed through metadata.

Chain consensus: Chain consensus is a potential point of attack. One example is a recent initiative by Celestia to add an anonymity layer to obscure the metadata of validators against particular attacks seeking to disrupt chain consensus in Celestia’s Data Availability Sampling (DAS) process.

Securing Web3 through anonymity

As Web3 continues to grow, so does the amount of metadata about people’s activities being offered up to newly empowered surveillance systems.

Beyond VPNs

Virtual private network (VPN) technology is decades old at this point. The lack of advancement is shocking, with most VPNs remaining in the same centralized and proprietary infrastructures. Networks like Tor and Dandelion stepped in as decentralized solutions. Yet they are still vulnerable to surveillance by global adversaries capable of “timing analysis” via the control of entry and exit nodes. Even more advanced tools are needed.

Noise networks

All surveillance looks for patterns in a network full of noise. By further obscuring patterns of communication and de-linking metadata like IPs from metadata generated by traffic, the possible attack vectors can be significantly reduced, and metadata patterns can be scrambled into nonsense.

Anonymizing networks have emerged to anonymize sensitive traffic like communications or crypto transactions via noise: cover traffic, timing obfuscations and data mixing. In the same spirit, other VPNs like Mullvad have introduced programs like DAITA (Defense Against AI-guided Traffic Analysis), which seeks to add “distortion” to its VPN network.

Scrambling the codes

Whether it’s defending people against the assassinations in tomorrow’s drone wars or securing their onchain transactions, new anonymity networks are needed to scramble the codes of what makes all of us targetable: the metadata our online lives leave in their wake.

The state of capture is already here. Machine learning is feeding off our data. Instead of leaving people’s data there unprotected, Web3 and anonymity systems can make sure that what ends up in the teeth of AI is effectively garbage.

Opinion by: Casey Ford, PhD, researcher at Nym Technologies.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Coin Market

Solana’s 5th birthday: From pandemic origins to US crypto stockpile

Published

1 hour ago

March 17, 2025

Layer-1 blockchain Solana is marking its fifth anniversary since launching its mainnet in 2020. Over the years, it has become one of the most active blockchain networks by transaction volume and is among the few cryptocurrencies proposed for inclusion in a US digital asset reserve.

Since the first Solana block was built on March 16, 2020, the network has processed more than 408 billion transactions and nearly $1 trillion worth of value on decentralized exchanges — establishing itself as one of the industry’s leading layer-1 blockchains.

Source: Solana

Here are some of the Solana ecosystem’s most notable milestones since it was launched by Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko and Solana co-founder Raj Gokal to the public in 2020.

Solana was born just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit

While Solana’s origins can be traced back to late 2017 when Yakovenko released a white paper outlining a timekeeping method for blockchains called “Proof of History,” but Solana wasn’t launched until March 2020 — right as the world started to enact emergency measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The high-speed, low-cost layer 1 Solana blockchain launch was assisted by crypto-focused venture capital firm Multicoin Capital, leading a financing round for Solana, which brought in roughly $20 million worth of private token sales in July 2019.

Source: OKX

Additional funding poured in soon after, and within 20 months of launching, Solana was hailed as a potential “Ethereum killer” as it soared to a $77.8 billion market cap at the peak of the 2020-2021 bull cycle.

Solana hit hard by 2022 bear market, FTX collapse — but bounced back

The 2022 bear market, coupled with the catastrophic collapse of crypto exchange FTX, tanked Solana’s market cap to $3 billion — a whopping 96% fall from its previous peak — by late 2022.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s former firm purchased around 58 million Solana tokens — currently worth $7.4 billion — from Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation. Solana was “by far the most serious” layer 1 that FTX was helping scale, Fortune said in an April 2022 report.

FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 11, 2022, and is still in the process of unlocking hundreds of millions of dollars worth of staked Solana tokens from FTX’s wallets. Solana’s price fell to $8.30 on Dec. 29, 2022.

Despite the setback, 2023 marked the start of Solana’s impressive comeback, which saw its market cap rise nearly 50-fold from $3 billion to over $140 billion by Jan. 19, 2025.

Memecoin craze takes Solana adoption to the next level

One of the biggest reasons behind Solana’s comeback was the crypto memecoin craze that took place between late 2023 and 2024 — a $100 billion market that Solana dominated.

Several Solana memecoins such as Bonk (BONK), Dogwifhat (WIF), Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) rose to multibillion-dollar market caps in early 2024 — around the time Solana memecoin launchpad Pump.fun became one of the most popular crypto platforms for memecoin lovers.

Pump.fun alone has raked in over $540 million in revenue over the last 12 months and even surpassed Ethereum over 24-hour intervals at some points.

Solana is home to many of the largest memecoins by market cap. Source: CoinGecko

No Solana memecoin, however, drew more attention than the Official Trump (TRUMP) token launched by now-US President Donald Trump’s inner circle on Jan. 17 — which soared to a $14.6 billion market within two days before it came crashing down.

The TRUMP memecoin briefly pushed Solana decentralized finance (DeFi) total value locked to $14.2 billion, trailing only Ethereum, DefiLlama data shows.

happy 5th birthday @solana

congratulations on 5 years of building & shipping the greatest tech to ever grace our industry

manlets on top pic.twitter.com/Clkv3eEpn9

— pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) March 16, 2025

The Solana blockchain has also become the third largest adopter of stablecoins behind Ethereum and Tron.

Solana unveils the first major crypto phone

In May 2023, Solana released the first major crypto phone, called “Solana Saga.”

Sales for the Android device with the built-in crypto wallet started slow but skyrocketed after a 30 million BONK airdrop enticed memecoin enthusiasts to make a purchase.

Solana also unveiled a newer, shinier Solana “Seeker” smartphone last September to better facilitate memecoin trading and accrue token rewards.

While most reviewers say the Solana phones lack the technical capabilities of an iPhone or Google Pixel, Solana has seen over 140,000 presales for the two products.

The Solana Seeker phone is currently priced at $500.

Hardware specifications of the Solana Seeker phone. Source: Solana Mobile

Solana, however, has also been plagued with several network outages over its five-year span — halting block production for 20 hours in some instances.

Solana validators have been forced to restart the network on several occasions when network activity surged.

A new independent validator client called Firedancer is scheduled to go live on Solana’s mainnet sometime in 2025 to address Solana’s client diversity woes. It has been touted as a superior solution to “QUIC” — a Google-developed data transfer protocol that has failed to process transactions on Solana over a dozen times.

Solana set to be included in Trump’s Digital Asset Stockpile

The Trump administration says it will include Solana in the Digital Asset Stockpile, which it confirmed through an executive order on March 7. It is the youngest cryptocurrency on the list.

The Digital Asset Stockpile will initially use cryptocurrency forfeited in government criminal cases.

The US doesn’t appear to hold Solana, according to crypto analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. However, the White House said it would complete an audit of crypto asset holdings.

Trump initially announced that Solana would become a US reserve asset on March 2.

Source: Donald Trump

However, he later established a Bitcoin-only reserve and the Digital Asset Stockpile, which looks like it will include Solana in addition to Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and Cardano (ADA).

Solana is currently priced at $128.17 — the sixth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $64.5 billion. Solana is down 56% from its all-time high as the broader market continues to navigate through recession fears and weakened market sentiment of late.

Magazine: Comeback 2025: Is Ethereum poised to catch up with Bitcoin and Solana?

Coin Market

Trump’s second ex-wife calls for end of persecution against Roger Ver

Published

1 hour ago

March 17, 2025

US President Donald Trump’s second ex-wife, Marla Maples, has shown support for ending the country’s case against early Bitcoin advocate Roger Ver, known as “Bitcoin Jesus.”

“Sharing more re [regarding] the call to dismiss the prosecution against Roger Ver,” Maples said in a March 16 X post, sharing a video created by an organization aimed at supporting Ver and tagging Trump, Elon Musk and US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Department of Justice charged Ver with mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns in April 2024, alleging he hid the amount of Bitcoin (BTC) he owned when he renounced his US citizenship in 2014 and defrauded the Internal Revenue Service out of $48 million by failing to report the gains he made through selling them.

Sharing more re the call to dismiss the prosecution against Roger Ver @PamBondi @elonmusk @realDonaldTrump @Davewarrington https://t.co/BckQwEXBW6

— marla maples (@itsmarlamaples) March 16, 2025

Maples and Trump met in the mid-1980s during his first marriage to Ivana Trump, and was his second wife from 1993 until 1999. She has long been involved with philanthropy and has advocated for multiple charities and causes.

She is seemingly still close to and supportive of Trump, who together have a daughter, Tiffany Trump. Maples attended Trump’s inauguration and told the London Evening Standard in July that she was “open to whatever way that I can serve” the then-presidential bidder.

Maples joins a host of high-profile figures calling to stop the prosecution of Ver, which includes Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and online black market Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was facing a double life sentence in prison until Trump pardoned him in January.

Ver has appealed to Trump for a pardon, claiming he is being unfairly persecuted and is a victim of “lawfare.”

Neither Trump nor the White House has publicly acknowledged Ver’s plea, but Trump’s cost-cutting czar Musk said in a January X post that Ver “gave up his US citizenship. No pardon for Ver. Membership has its privileges.”

Ver was arrested in Spain at the time of the US indictment pending his extradition to the US but was later granted bail on the condition he remain in the country.

He moved to dismiss the government’s case in December, arguing the charges were unconstitutional, and the IRS’ “exit tax” for renounced citizens is “inscrutably vague” when applied to crypto.

Cointelegraph has contacted Maples for comment.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Coin Market

OKX suspends DEX aggregator to stop ‘further misuse’ by Lazarus

Published

2 hours ago

March 17, 2025

Crypto exchange OKX has temporarily paused its decentralized exchange aggregator to prevent “further misuse” by North Korean hacking collective Lazarus Group.

“Recently, we detected a coordinated effort by Lazarus group to misuse our defi services,” said OKX on March 17.

“After consulting with regulators, we made the proactive decision to temporarily suspend our DEX aggregator services. This move allows us to implement additional upgrades to prevent further misuse.”

The OKX helpdesk confirmed that the DEX aggregator was temporarily suspended for an “internal review and upgrade” but did not provide a timeline.

It added that crypto wallet services will remain available to all customers, but it will “pause new wallet creation in select markets during this time.”

Source: OKX

On March 11, Bloomberg reported that European Union financial watchdogs were investigating the firm’s DEX aggregator, called OKX Web3, and its wallet services for their alleged role in laundering funds from the Bybit hack.

“Over the past few days, we’ve faced targeted media attacks questioning our integrity and operations,” the firm stated in a blog post. It added that it “can’t ignore the fact that these attacks are happening at a time when we are actively fighting against financial crime.”

According to Bybit CEO Ben Zhou, nearly $100 million from the $1.5 billion Bybit hack had been laundered through OKX’s Web3 proxy, with a portion of the funds now untraceable.

OKX responded on March 11, stating that the “Bloomberg article is misleading,” saying that when Bybit got hacked, OKX reacted in two ways: by freezing associated funds from moving into its CEX, and developing the new hack detection features.

OKX stated that the goal is to ensure that explorers properly highlight the actual DEX processing trades “rather than mistakenly identifying our aggregator as the point of trade.”

The exchange has already deployed a “hacker address detection system” for its DEX aggregator in addition to a system to track the hacker’s latest addresses and block them on its centralized exchange in real time.

“We already rolled out a lot of controls for OKX Web3 to fight with the misuse, including prohibited markets’ IP blocking and real-time black address detection and blocking system,” said OKX CEO Star Xu on March 17.

The firm also clarified that the OKX Web3 DEX aggregator is not a custodian of customer assets, adding that its function is to provide access to liquidity across multiple protocols. However, “some have deliberately misrepresented our platform,” it said.

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