CrypTTracker - Investigating Wallet Transfers

CrypTTracker is a work-in-progress tool for investigating wallet transfers on the STEEM blockchain.

The idea was brought forward by @iamstan while investigating voting rings on Steemit. Most voting rings we encounter are using delegations from Steemit.

Consider this copy/paste image and the 14 characters of attribution to Pexels. It had upvotes from 300+ accounts with delegated SP. Imagine 10 more voting rings of that size and you have 3,000 accounts spamming the blockchain.

Most of the concerned Steemians we work with @steemflagrewards rely on their instincts and STEEM blockchain's transparency in tracking abuse on the platform. Manual tracking is a time consuming process.

We use different condensers, steemd, steemworld and steemdb for researching accounts. It takes multiple browser tabs, clicks and windows just to come up with a list of well-researched ring of accounts.

And while taking the time to pull data together, these accounts are busy posting spam and generating STEEM rewards.

Developing CrypTTracker is an essential for efficiency. This tool will aid in pinpointing the main account the voting ring uses for withdrawing STEEM. It will also help collect accounts related to a voting ring.

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For the Utopian Hackathon, I came up with the following goals:

1. provide account name and find transfers to exchanges
2. provide account name and find transfers to other accounts
3. provide account name and find who transferred to this account name
4. provide wallet address and find other accounts using it

Considering the time constraint, distractions and my Python proficiency, I was able to complete two of my goals. The rest are included for future development.

This project is open source and made available at below GitHub repository:
https://github.com/livefreensmart/crypttracker

Project Details

CrypTTracker is a tool developed for the anti-abuse community. It is now possible to integrate this project's code to a Discord bot providing

• a list of an account's transfers to exchanges with wallet address specified in memo
  
  
• a list of an account's transfers to other accounts that might be related to a voting ring
  
  

A beem-powered function is also available for streaming wallet transfers. Provide the account name and how far back you want to start. You can provide a whole number for days or less than 1 for hours.

For below example, we're looking at an account's transfers to exchanges 42 minutes ago. It prints the memo to the console.

Technology Stack

• Python 3.6
• Requires Beem by @holger80 for streaming blockchain operations
• Requires lxml for scraping an account's wallet history
  
  

Roadmap

• Discord integration or a website (may dive into Quasar Framework for that)
• Consider SteemSQL subscription for faster response time
• Complete goal#3 - retrieve accounts transferring to the account in question
• Complete goal#4 - retrieve different accounts using a given wallet address

There will be more features simmering in my head which can benefit the anti-abuse community. Updates will be posted as soon as possible.

Key Takeaway
From a beginner's standpoint, it is overwhelming to finish a project in a short amount of time. But at the same time, it challenges your ability to focus and be an efficient developer.

• Learning how to use beem is easy. The documentation is very helpful.
• Learning XPath is very interesting when you're web scraping.

Contribution
Pull requests are appreciated on GitHub. Comments, enhancement requests are also welcome.

Github Account

https://github.com/livefreensmart

I'm a beginner Pythonista, this is my first hackathon and my first Open Source Python project!

It has been a wonderful 24+ hours of learning and improving my skills. Thank you for the opportunity @elear and @utopian-io.

Visit below post on the latest hackathon update from the Utopian Villa in Lucca, Italy.