Recently the popular decentralized exchange platform of Uniswap reported taking bold steps, acting towards obligating guidelines against defi crimes. Uniswap blocked 253 crypto wallet addresses altogether. All the refrained accounts were said to have relation to the Tornado Cash protocol. It’s worth noting that the mixer protocol is already banned by the US authorities.
According to the report, the blocked addresses were either directly involved in receiving stolen funds or fall into the category of addresses banned by the US government.
The blockage over 253 crypto addresses would refrain them from using the official website of Uniswap, since it is controlled and maintained by the New York based entity, Uniswap Labs. However, the blocked addresses would be able to freely use the smart contracts of Uniswap. This is due to the existence of a platform over the open blockchain of the Ethereum network.
Out of overall blocked addresses, thirty were said to be in association with domain name services of the network, Ethereum Name Service (ENS). The domain name service turns the difficult alphanumeric wallet addresses into easy and readable names. However, many people argued that most of such addresses belonged to the legitimate users but they have to face the repercussions of actions against the illicit addresses.
In April 2022, Uniswap reported working together with TRM Labs, a prominent blockchain analytics firm. The firms came together in order to identify the wallet activity of users. This fell under their mega drive towards managing and mitigating the potential risks.
Earlier the Uniswap DEX reported blocking the addresses mentioned in the list of sanctioned addresses issued by the US Treasury Department. However, its field of operation had expanded since then. The analytics firm working along with the dex platform identified and distributed the addresses into seven different categories. This included stolen funds, known terrorist wallets, privacy mixers, etc.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/08/24/uniswap-blocked-more-than-250-crypto-wallets-suspicious-of-defi-crime/