Address mapping to Exchanges

[sixtus.leon]

Hello,

how do Websites like https://www.walletexplorer.com/  determine that Addresses belong to an Exchange?
and how does Address Clustering work?

[1715588491]

1715588491

[1715588491]

1715588491

[1715588491]

1715588491

[aleksej996]

It is quite easy to determine which Bitcoin addresses exchanges use, by deposit and withdrawing money from them.
Eventually they can build up a list pretty easily over time.

[AdolfinWolf]

You might be interested in this answer given on Bitcoin.SE,

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/49201

What walletexplorer does is called address clustering. When you spend bitcoins, your wallet will take input from several txouts belonging to several addresses depending on amount to be spend. So walletexplorer works on a simple heuristic:

    If two addresses appear as inputs in any given transaction, they belong to same user

More detail about this method can be seen in this paper by Reid and Harrigan (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.4524.pdf). Of course, this method will fail in case of mixers and coinjoin transactions. There are advanced ways to even detect transaction that go through mixers, but I don't think wallet explorer does that

To find name of wallets it can scrap forums like bitcointalk, some addresses are tagged publicly in blockchain.info, also it can has bots trade on major exchanges to get their addresses.

and the link to the paper which looks quite interesting, although i'm not entirely sure how on-topic it is.

[buwaytress]

Additionally, some services also publish their own public addresses, typically cold storage wallets for proof of funds, along with signed messages to provide proof of ownership. I believe CMC tagged some of the earliest known exchanges this way. Most addresses linked to those public addresses should provide a short mapping route to clustering known wallets to an entity. Of course, there are cases of random, anonymous spends to known public addresses... but these can usually be distinguished by their dust inputs.