The founder of popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, Hayden Adams has raised alarm about ENS domain scams. Adams in a post via his X account on Wednesday warned members of the crypto community about how scammers are copying wallet addresses as Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains to confuse users.
In the post, the Uniswap founder explained how illicit actors imitated and registered his wallet address as an ENS wallet. Furthermore, he described how the scammers with the aid of ENS copied his address by adding .eth to it. Hence, some interfaces mostly pop the ENS address whenever users paste Hayden Adam’s wallet address on them.
According to the Uniswap founder, most interfaces often place the imitated address at the top of the search relating to his wallet. More so, the ENS wallet scam is devised to mislead people into sending cryptocurrency to fake addresses instead of the ones they intend to. Consequently, Hayden Adams called on the team behind the interfaces to find such mischievous addresses and remove them to save users from falling victim.
How Other Popular Figures in the Crypto Community Reacted to the ENS Domain Scam
A host of popular figures in the crypto community have reacted to the calls of Hayden Adams. The founder of Ethereum wallet manager, MyCrypto, Taylor Monahan revealed how his project combated similar scams in its early days. To curb the then-raising scam, Monahan explained that MyEtherWallet bent registration regulations for names starting with OX.
Also, another user on X identified as Nick Bath explained how scammers had used similar tactics on OpenSea some years back. The user recalled how scammers would set their username to the contract address of popular collections.
In reaction, ENS founder and lead developer Nick Johnson also illuminated the scam. He urged project teams to design their interfaces and stop their autocomplete feature for wallets. Additionally, the expert stated that such a feature is dangerous and could inflict huge losses. ENS went on to educate users about the scam in its user experience guidelines.
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a naming service for wallet addresses that simplifies tricky data to simple and readable names. Similarly, ENS can be likened to the Domain Name System (DNS) used for websites in the web2 landscape. The project was launched on May 4, 2017 by Alex Van de Sande and Nick Johnson from the Ethereum Foundation.