Performance art or hidden motives? Bold speculation on the reasons and identity behind the consecutive burning of significant assets by nd4.eth.

Speculation on nd4.eth's consecutive burning of significant assets Performance art or hidden motives?

Author: Haotian

The mysterious nd4.eth address can be said to have pioneered on-chain performance art.

On July 26th, 2500 ETH was burned, and on August 10th, 1BAYC, 1MAYC, and 1BAKC were burned, with a total value of nearly 5 million US dollars.

This astonishing burning art not only triggered a begging show on the entire chain, with nearly 300 on-chain addresses begging from it within 2 days, but also attracted more than a dozen scammers impersonating the nd4.eth ID, deceiving users to participate in Twitter airdrops, on-chain coin issuance, and liquidity injections.

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So, what other related addresses does nd4.eth have? How much assets are at risk of being burned? And the true identity behind nd4.eth? Is it really as simple as being betrayed by a girlfriend as rumored on the internet?

1. Through on-chain screening, the following addresses, which are highly related to nd4.eth (with large amounts of transfers), are likely to be controlled by the same person: endit.eth, enditall.eth, noth.eth, blackholefaller.eth, ndnow.eth;

2. The total asset balance of the above addresses is currently about 3.7 million US dollars, mainly consisting of assets pledged by nd4.eth on GMX, GNS, gTrade, and ApeStake; the NFT balance is one CryptoPunk #5237, one MAYC #3573, one BAYC #71, and one BAYC #289, worth about 250,000 US dollars;

In other words, the master of burning art still has around 3.95 million US dollars to burn (not a complete count);

3. Regarding the issue of whether the 0x0xdEAD000000000000000042069420694206942069 transferred to nd4.eth is a black hole, there is currently a big controversy. This address consists of 4 cycles of DEAD +0000000000000000+42069, and it has a deep hacker culture connotation. The fair statement is that it is not a black hole, but rather an address with a public-private key match that is almost impossible to calculate with current technology. Therefore, some projects or individuals use it as a burn address, such as SHIB. (There is no need to argue about this issue. In theory, it can be calculated with a certain probability, but unless you calculate it yourself or can prove that the address has been calculated, it is the same as proving that Satoshi Nakamoto’s private key still exists);

4. Several conjectures about the true identity behind nd4.eth:

1) The girlfriend cheating theory: Currently, this is the mainstream theory, but observant friends will notice several details: the artist’s multiple domain names, such as end it, end it all, nothing, blackhole, etc., indicate a state of emptiness, hollowness, and the end of everything. Moreover, a year ago, he had an NFT named Blackhole2, which clearly does not seem like an impulsive act due to a recent girlfriend cheating, but rather a “performance art” with long-term planning and scheming.

2) By analyzing the interaction traces of multiple layers of upstream and downstream addresses on the chain (as shown in the figure), it is found that the upstream address of nd4.eth, enditall.eth, received a large transfer of 2285 ETH marked as Union chain on January 18, 2023. What is the story behind this address? There is a certain pattern in the flow of assets in this address: large amounts of ETH enter in integer amounts of 100-600, and then small amounts are dispersed out, with a large volume of on-chain transactions. Based on this, there are three possibilities:

1) Is it an OTC financial business of HitBTC? Most of the deposits at this address come from the hot wallet of HitBTC, a well-established exchange. The amounts are mostly integers over 100ETH, and after receiving the funds, the address frequently distributes small amounts of funds, ranging from 0.01-8 ETH, to other addresses such as LianGuaiyout contract (batch payment settlement contract). It seems like a kind of financial behavior but also not quite.

2) Similar to Changenow, a KYC-free OTC service provider, this is a centralized asset exchange platform where users can use fiat currency and other OTC methods to purchase assets. The platform then aggregates the assets to the hot wallet based on the users’ purchase demands and distributes small amounts of assets to the users. This possibility is quite high.

3) A “money laundering organization” on the chain, because the pattern of large amounts coming in and small amounts being dispersed out is very similar to money laundering operations. Moreover, observing the website associated with this address gives a strong impression of a financial pyramid scheme. They provide expert-level investment services to help users with crypto transactions, and their BTC address has already received over 50,000 BTC. There is also a possibility of a money laundering organization behind it.

When following this logic, it becomes a bit scary, because nd4.eth is a big shot with mysterious origins of assets, with most of their assets coming from their own exchange. The biggest asset association is Union chain, so it’s hard to say there is no subtle relationship. Of course, we won’t draw conclusions here. Chain detectives can judge for themselves, or just take it as a suspense story.

5) The problem is, even if the above speculations are true, the reasons for their large-scale destruction on the chain cannot be directly proven. We can only make further guesses, such as: OTC service providers’ internal conflicts or money laundering syndicate, or a chain marketing event comparable to Buffett’s lunch, or a last-ditch resistance against regulatory supervision…blah blah blah.

I’m not good at writing scripts for solving cases, I’m just here to add some laughter. It’s better to believe that money can be willful, especially when it comes to fast money falling from the sky!

The end.

The above story is purely fictional. If you think it’s all nonsense, it’s okay. It’s also good to learn a bit more about on-chain data analysis.

Note: Anti-fraud reminder, currently there are many nd4.eth IDs appearing in Twitter searches, as well as suspicious contracts that seem to be nd4.eth transferring large amounts of ERC20 tokens to other addresses and adding liquidity in browsers. These are all phishing scams.

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