CEX exposure
Transfers between the wallet and a centralized exchange (CEX): funds withdrawn from an exchange, transfers with exchange wallets, and payments into an exchange deposit address.
Why it matters
Section titled “Why it matters”Most exchanges verify who their customers are. A withdrawal to your wallet, or a payment into your own deposit address, connects the wallet to an account with your name, your documents and your bank details. The exchange sees that link, and so can anyone it shares data with.
A deposit address is the strongest part of this. Exchanges give each account its own deposit address, so a payment into it points at one specific account. Two wallets that pay into the same deposit address are linked, with a confidence.
| Rule | Fires when | Severity | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
funded_by_cex | Your first transaction on a chain was paid with coins from an exchange wallet (see the funder). | high | 1.0 |
direct | Transfers to or from known exchange wallets. | medium from 3 transfers, else low | 1.0 |
deposit_address | This address paid into an exchange deposit address: one on the label list, or one seen forwarding at least 60% of what it sends to exchange wallets. | critical; high when the deposit address has more than 6 senders | listed 0.92, detected 0.8; with more than 6 senders 0.7 and 0.6 |
A deposit address with many senders may be shared, so its findings cost less and its links are weaker. Up to 5 candidate deposit addresses are checked per scan.
Where the labels come from
Section titled “Where the labels come from”Two sources, both public:
- The scan ships with 4,959 exchange wallets and 30,124 known deposit addresses from 338 exchanges, filtered from the open dataset dawsbot/eth-labels (MIT). The list is part of the page, so looking it up never leaves your device.
- The explorer’s own public tags: when the explorer marks an address in the history as an exchange wallet or an exchange deposit address, the scan uses that too.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Only exchanges on the list or tagged by the explorer are recognised. No finding here does not prove the wallet never used an exchange.
- A detected deposit address is a pattern, not a label: it forwards most of what it receives to exchange wallets. Its confidence is lower for that reason.
- The exchange knows more than any scan: it can see which account withdrew, even when the chain data looks clean.
How to reduce it
Section titled “How to reduce it”- Use exchanges from a wallet you are fine having tied to your identity.
- Do not pay into the same deposit address from wallets you want to keep apart.
- A withdrawal that pays for a wallet’s first transaction puts the exchange’s label on its origin. A wallet funded that way starts out linked to that exchange account.