What is a “known entity”? Labeled vs unknown addresses

On a blockchain, every wallet and contract is just a long string of characters. Nothing in the data says "this is an exchange" or "this is a lending app". Names are added afterwards by people who researched the address. On Hopchain, an address that has such a name is called a known entity, and it is drawn in amber. Everything else is grey and called unknown.

Where the names come from

Hopchain's labels are compiled from publicly available label data, largely the label pages that block explorers such as Etherscan and its sister sites publish. Today that is about 42,000 labeled addresses collected for eight networks. Hopchain currently reads activity on Ethereum, Polygon and Arbitrum, so those are the labels you will mostly see. They cover things such as exchange wallets, DeFi protocols, token contracts, bridges and well-known projects.

These are labels other people assigned. They can be incomplete, out of date or occasionally wrong, and Hopchain does not verify each one independently.

Unknown does not mean suspicious

Most addresses in the world have no public label, including almost every private person's wallet. When most of a wallet's connections are grey, that is the normal case, not a warning.

Known does not mean safe

A name only tells you what an address is said to be. It is not an endorsement. Two cautions:

• A label describes the address, not the intentions of whoever uses it. Even legitimate services can be exploited or misused.
• Token contracts decide for themselves what they report, including who a transfer appears to come from. A familiar name showing up next to strange tokens does not prove that party did anything. See fake airdrops and spam NFTs.

The red "flagged" marker

A separate, smaller list marks addresses that public sources report as scam, phishing, heist or exploit related. These are shown in red and link to a short page explaining why. This list covers roughly 160 addresses, and it has no coverage for Ethereum mainnet or Base, so the absence of a red marker there says nothing. Treat a red marker as a reason to be careful, and never treat its absence as clearance. More on how to use this when paying someone: how to check a wallet before sending crypto.

How to use labels well

• Use names to make a long connection list readable: which of these are exchanges, which are apps, which are unlabeled.
• Follow the amber ones first to understand where a wallet's money mostly goes.
• Verify anything important on the block explorer itself, which is one click away through "View on explorer".

This is general information, not financial or security advice.