[alt account hunters] Which posted address formats should I look for?

[LoyceV]

So, there's this:

I've been thinking about a new data project for a while: once in a while someone finds the same address that is posted by different users, and I assume they find those by searching for that one address. How fun would it be to list all addresses ever posted on Bitcointalk, and add all usernames that posted it to each address on the list? It'll be a lot of data to process, and I'm a bit afraid the resulting list will be very long with many false positives and many already handled cases. But I'm pretty sure this data will bust a lot of alt accounts

You absolutely should do it.

I now have 235 GB and 54 million posts ready to search through. I'm only going to do this once, so I want to do it right the first time. I know Bitcoin address formats (although I'll probably ignore the rare Bech32 multisig and taproot addresses), I've seen Ethereum and BSC, but what else is out there to search for? A regex to search for would be even better

[dkbit98]

I now have 200+ GB and 51 million posts ready to search through. I'm only going to do this once, so I want to do it right the first time. I know Bitcoin address formats (although I'll probably ignore the rare Bech32 multisig and taproot addresses), I've seen Ethereum and BSC, but what else is out there to search for? A regex to search for would be even better

Maybe you should consider searching for Bitcoin Silent Payment address, they are usually starting with sp1...
I know silent payments are not yet used by most people, but I am expecting to see this change in future when more wallets adopts silent payments.

[Shishir99]

I've seen Ethereum and BSC, but what else is out there to search for? A regex to search for would be even better

I would ask for TRC20 addresses. A lot of people use a TRC20 USDT address to take a loan. It would be interesting to see if people were taking loans using multiple accounts. Also, we have seen some hacking incidents where hackers posted a loan request on lending threads using a TRC20 USDT address, and later deleted those posts before the account owner noticed it. Sometimes the hackers were able to take a loan. I don't remember the cases anymore, but I think I have seen at least two cases like this.

[Vod]

A regex to search for would be even better

Don't hate me for using AI. 

^(?:0x[a-fA-F0-9]{40}$|
   [13][a-km-zA-HJ-NP-Z1-9]{25,34}$|
   bc1[a-zA-HJ-NP-Z0-9]{25,90}$|
   [LM3][a-km-zA-HJ-NP-Z1-9]{25,34}$|
   r[0-9a-zA-Z]{24,34}$|
   (?:bitcoincash:)?(q|p)[a-z0-9]{41}$|
   X[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{33}$|
   D{1}[5-9A-HJ-NP-U]{25,34}$)

would work with Bitcoin Legacy, SegWit, Bech32, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, BCH and Monero.

[Amphenomenon]

I've seen Ethereum and BSC, but what else is out there to search for? A regex to search for would be even better

Shishir99  have given one of the most common type of address here, which is the TRC address but I think you can add the LTC address because this is one of the main alternative for signature payment when Bitcoin Tx fee is high. Then SOL which is a common alternative for ETH and BSC for airdrop bounties.

[nutildah]

A regex to search for would be even better

Don't hate me for using AI.  

^(?:0x[a-fA-F0-9]{40}$|
   [13][a-km-zA-HJ-NP-Z1-9]{25,34}$|
   bc1[a-zA-HJ-NP-Z0-9]{25,90}$|
   [LM3][a-km-zA-HJ-NP-Z1-9]{25,34}$|
   r[0-9a-zA-Z]{24,34}$|
   (?:bitcoincash:)?(q|p)[a-z0-9]{41}$|
   X[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{33}$|
   D{1}[5-9A-HJ-NP-U]{25,34}$)

would work with Bitcoin Legacy, SegWit, Bech32, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, BCH and Monero.

This is great.

To reduce the workload, I would only include the following networks:

 - Bitcoin
 - Any network whose addresses start with "0x" (Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, etc.)
 - TRON

That covers 99.9% of contests, giveaways, bounties and signature campaigns.

Some block explorers allow you to have private address tags. To give you an idea of the popularity of each network, I have the following # of tagged addresses in each block explorer:

bscscan - 1105 addresses
etherscan - 486 addresses
tronscan - 42 addresses
polygonscan - 4 addresses

[LoyceV]

Maybe you should consider searching for Bitcoin Silent Payment address, they are usually starting with sp1...

I'm only doing this once, so for now I don't expect many alts to use Silent Payment addresses.

Don't hate me for using AI. 

The problem with AI is that you have to check everything. But it's a start.

I'll work on this the coming days

[apogio]

I don't frequent the altcoin board, but I 'd second the users above who suggested addresses for Tron and Solana. I think most bounty hunters (and scammers) nowadays use Solana and Tron, whereas back in 2022 they used Ethereum. The path changes, but the source and destination of scamming remains the same.

[LoyceV]

I think most bounty hunters (and scammers) nowadays use Solana and Tron

I checked a few bounty threads, and I see mostly centrally controlled BSC:

BSC Wallet Address: 0x1e7846dd3c2cfcbb8f6cb4adf4bb2a221c8f3ffe

But there's some TON (is that Tron? I don't know squat about shitcoins):

TON-adress: UQAsC4yxqGEG2AAOtNg34PGybuWem97aZVmxUNjbRrX8Am7W

And I guess this is Solana:

ETH/Solana Address: BoKcqxVLugS4QLa6dc3eng5PRjWhYMNNiHzbz4Hf2poX

By the looks of it, it's going to take days to make my 51 million files better accessible, so I have enough time to sort this out first

[apogio]

But there's some TON (is that Tron? I don't know squat about shitcoins):

TON-adress: UQAsC4yxqGEG2AAOtNg34PGybuWem97aZVmxUNjbRrX8Am7W

I searhed it on Tronscan, but it caused an error, so I guess it's not Tron.

What you're looking for is TON:
1. "A decentralized and open internet designed to onboard 500M people on-chain, built by the community using technology developed by Telegram."
2. "Toncoin is TON's native cryptocurrency. It is used for network operations, transactions, games or collectibles built on TON."

I will just, prefer to not talk about it again, sorry

And I guess this is Solana:

ETH/Solana Address: BoKcqxVLugS4QLa6dc3eng5PRjWhYMNNiHzbz4Hf2poX

Yes this must be Solana.

[nutildah]

Yeah honestly I wouldn't bother with Solana or TON.

[Hazink]

Yeah honestly I wouldn't bother with Solana or TON.

Both are not mostly used here, but there are a couple of members who have posted it, especially with the trend in the Ton blockchain.

If it will cost nothing, then adding it won't be a bad idea, although for Ton, most of the wallets I have seen users make use of here belong to an exchange, which one exchange uses almost the same address for every user with a memo/tag; the only difference is to designate one deposit to a specific user.

[Bitcoinsummoner]

Scammers always say nice things to fool the mind. They are not always confined to one place. They are constantly researching new methods and new ways to cheat people. Tron and Solana are the new fad for scammers. Since people have become more aware of Ethereum through scammers, they are changing their positions.

[LoyceV]

Don't hate me for using AI.  

It's kinda in the right direction, but incomplete. If I have to find all the details anyway, it's no help.

For Bitcoin, I'm now at this (slightly adjusted from StackOverflow):

Code:

egrep -alw --regexp="bc(0([ac-hj-np-z02-9]{39}|[ac-hj-np-z02-9]{25,90})|1[ac-hj-np-z02-9]{8,87})|[13][a-km-zA-HJ-NP-Z1-9]{25,35}"

This seems to work, and matches about 1% of the recent posts.

The many different address formats for each coin make it more complicated, and Google loves showing old posts that don't include the most recent addresses.

[Amphenomenon]

Yeah honestly I wouldn't bother with Solana or TON.

I'm curious why do you say so?

Both are popular choice in recent times, while TON  got it time last year, it was being used popularly  for telegram airdrops. If reason is around Op managing resources I guess the TON might be ignored for the now and not SOL.

[nutildah]

Yeah honestly I wouldn't bother with Solana or TON.

I'm curious why do you say so?

Both are popular choice in recent times, while TON  got it time last year, it was being used popularly  for telegram airdrops. If reason is around Op managing resources I guess the TON might be ignored for the now and not SOL.

Because the sheer volume of data to comb through with BTC, ETH and BSC addresses is already pretty overwhelming. Most of the alts I connect are based on addresses posted between 2017 - 2024, and there's only been 1 - 2 years of TON and SOL addresses accumulated on the forum thus far. While I'm sure bounties/giveaways using these addresses are already being abused, its relatively insignificant compared to the abuse going on in the other 3 networks.

[LoyceV]

Because the sheer volume of data to comb through with BTC, ETH and BSC addresses is already pretty overwhelming.

Once I have a correct regex, the data volume isn't much of a problem anymore. Removing quotes takes much more processing power than matching the addresses.

[shasan]

I think it would be good if you could search for a Bitcoin wallet as well as an Ethereum wallet. Most of the old users have used Bitcoin wallets as well as Ethereum wallets for altcoin campaigns and Bitcoin campaigns.

I would ask for TRC20 addresses. A lot of people use a TRC20 USDT address to take a loan. It would be interesting to see if people were taking loans using multiple accounts. Also, we have seen some hacking incidents where hackers posted a loan request on lending threads using a TRC20 USDT address, and later deleted those posts before the account owner noticed it. Sometimes the hackers were able to take a loan. I don't remember the cases anymore, but I think I have seen at least two cases like this.

Only a few people take loans, so to know the alt account it may not work, but if it can be done as an additional, then Ethereum and Bitcoin are more important than TRC20.

[Shishir99]

Only a few people take loans, so to know the alt account, it may not work, but if it can be done as an additional, then Ethereum and Bitcoin are more important than TRC20.

I know BSC-20 and ERC20 are the most used addresses besides Bitcoin wallet addresses, and the next spot is taken by TRC-20, which should not be ignored. A lot of people use a TRC-20 address to take loans. I don't know why you are saying only a few people take loans. I can see there are hundreds of active loans all around the forum. This is not only a few people.

Now it is up to the alt account hunters and LoyceV. I don't actively look for alternative accounts, nor I check the lending board. So, probably you are right with your statement.

[shasan]

I know BSC-20 and ERC20 are the most used addresses besides Bitcoin wallet addresses, and the next spot is taken by TRC-20, which should not be ignored. A lot of people use a TRC-20 address to take loans. I don't know why you are saying only a few people take loans. I can see there are hundreds of active loans all around the forum. This is not only a few people.

Now it is up to the alt account hunters and LoyceV. I don't actively look for alternative accounts, nor I check the lending board. So, probably you are right with your statement.

You are correct that hundreds of accounts have active loans on the forum and have already repaid many, but almost all the users have used a Bitcoin wallet, and earlier, a lot of people (almost all) used erc-20 wallet. Considering these 2 types of accounts, I think BEP20/TRC20 is too low. I mean low, that doesn't mean only a few, that means few compared to BTC as well as ERC-20.