research-article

Traveling the token world: A graph analysis of Ethereum ERC20 token ecosystem

Authors:

Yutong LuAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '20: Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020

Pages 1411 - 1421

https://doi.org/10.1145/3366423.3380215

Published: 20 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

The birth of Bitcoin ushered in the era of cryptocurrency, which has now become a financial market attracted extensive attention worldwide. The phenomenon of startups launching Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to raise capital led to thousands of tokens being distributed on blockchains. Many studies have analyzed this phenomenon from an economic perspective. However, little is know about the characteristics of participants in the ecosystem. To fill this gap and considering over 80% of ICOs launched based on ERC20 token on Ethereum, in this paper, we conduct a systematic investigation on the whole Ethereum ERC20 token ecosystem to characterize the token creator, holder, and transfer activity. By downloading the whole blockchain and parsing the transaction records and event logs, we construct three graphs, namely token creator graph, token holder graph, and token transfer graph. We obtain many observations and findings by analyzing these graphs. Besides, we propose an algorithm to discover potential relationships between tokens and other accounts. The reported case shows that our algorithm can effectively reveal entities and the complex relationship between various accounts in the token ecosystem.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WWW '20: Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020

April 2020

3143 pages

ISBN:9781450370233

DOI:10.1145/3366423

Editors:
Yennun Huang
Acadmica sinica, Taiwan
,
Irwin King
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
,
Tie-Yan Liu
Microsoft Research Asia, China
,
Maarten van Steen
University of Twente, Netherlands

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

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Published: 20 April 2020

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WWW '20: The Web Conference 2020

April 20 - 24, 2020

Taipei, Taiwan

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3676164
Luo BChua TNgo CKumar RLauw HKa-Wei Lee R(2024)When Crypto Economics Meet Graph Analytics and LearningCompanion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589335.3651257(1186-1189)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589335.3651257
Lin DWu JYu YFu QZheng ZYang CChua TNgo CKa-Wei Lee RKumar RLauw H(2024)DenseFlow: Spotting Cryptocurrency Money Laundering in Ethereum Transaction GraphsProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589334.3645692(4429-4438)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
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