An Ethereum Foundation researcher recently made a discovery regarding the tracking of IP addresses of ETH stakers.
According to Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, all IP addresses of ether stakers can be tracked and correlated with the sensitive metadata of the owners of the cryptocurrency.
Drake believes that this is only a small part of a larger collection of Ether owner metadata, including deposit addresses, withdrawal addresses, commission recipients, and more.
This collection of data is then analyzed to gain insight into the most active and involved members of the Ethereum community.
The deliberate misuse of this sensitive data could have serious consequences for the Ethereum network.
For example, it could make the network vulnerable to Sybil attacks, where an attacker creates or controls multiple aliases to gain disproportionate control over network solutions.
Additionally, the network could be censored and certain users denied access or transactions rejected.
Drake’s message has caused concern among podcast listeners and social media users, with some referring to it as the “real coin of surveillance.”
The issue of personal data privacy has been a growing concern in the crypto community, with some teams, such as ConsenSys, beginning to collect IP addresses to comply with KYC and AML requirements.