Unit 3 · Level 1 · Wallet anatomy
Labels & tags
Explorers decorate famous addresses with labels: 'Binance 8', 'Vitalik.eth', 'Tornado Cash'. These come from research, self-identification, and crowdsourcing, and they turn raw hex into a readable map. But labels are annotations, not verdicts: they can be wrong, stale, or missing entirely. A good chain reader uses them and doubts them.
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What you get asked
An address is labelled 'Binance 8'. What does that actually mean?
'Believed to be' is the honest phrasing: labels reflect the community's and the explorer's best research, usually right, never guaranteed.
What's the biggest pitfall when relying on explorer labels?
Most big-entity labels are solid, but the long tail is messy. Scammers even name their wallets after trusted brands hoping you'll skim. Verify before you conclude.
Coins in an exchange's wallet belong to thousands of customers pooled together. On-chain you see the exchange, not the individual ___.
This is why trails 'end' at exchanges: inside, the exchange's private database takes over. The chain sees one big pot, not whose money is whose.
Match the wallet type to its typical on-chain behaviour
Even without a label, behaviour often gives the role away. Hot wallets buzz, cold wallets sleep, deposit addresses are one-way funnels.
Before building a conclusion on a label, what should a careful analyst do?
Labels are a head start, not a finish line. Does the 'exchange' wallet really behave like one? Trust, but verify: on-chain you always can. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Every address tells a story: age, habits, identity, and where the money went.