In the wake of recent crypto thefts and phishing attacks on well-known crypto executives and influencers, new features are being added to protect users.
Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, is the latest cryptocurrency wallet provider to add transaction previews and blocklists. This comes as the number of cryptocurrency thefts is on the rise.
On January 30, the cryptocurrency exchange said that it had added a new set of safety features to its wallet app to make it easier for users to spot scammers’ bad behaviour and take action.
Such integrations have a feature called “transaction preview,” which gives the user an idea of how their “token and NFT balances will change” during a transaction before they hit the “confirm” button.
The company has also released token approval alerts that let the user know when a decentralised application (dApp) wants permission to withdraw tokens and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
7/ Transaction Previews 🔍
When you take an action in Phantom, like minting a NFT, we scan your transaction and pro-actively find anything that looks fishy.
Website looks fishy? You get a warning.
Trying to obfuscate code? Warning.
Interacting with suspicious tokens? Warning. pic.twitter.com/22njxgdyJT
— Phantom (@phantom) January 26, 2023
Also, the company has added new layers of permission management that let users cancel DApp connections directly from the app. This helps reduce “exposure to potential vulnerabilities.”
The crypto exchange joins a number of other crypto wallet providers, such as Solana’s Phantom, Web3 wallet provider Ember, and Bitski, that have either released similar features or said they will. These features are meant to protect users from crypto scams and phishing attacks.
Just two days after Moonbirds creator Kevin Rose said he lost $1.1 million in NFTs in a targeted phishing attack, Phantom reminded users on Jan. 27 that its wallets are protected by a number of security features, such as transaction previews, an open-source blocklist, and the ability to report and burn NFT spam.
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The company explained its transaction preview feature by saying, “When you do something in Phantom, like mint an NFT, we scan your transaction and look for anything that seems off. It looks fishy, doesn’t it? You are told to stop. Are you trying to hide code? Warning. using tokens that you don’t trust? Warning.”
The open-source blocklist is a “list of malicious domains maintained by the community” that stops Phantom users from accidentally connecting to them.
Ember, a company that makes Web3 wallets, sent out a list of its own security tools on the same day that Phantom did.
On the list are translation previews, locking tokens and NFTs to stop bad transactions from draining assets, and revoking approvals.
5/7) As well, Ember allows you to lock your NFTs and tokens, which disables the ability to send or sell them until they have been unlocked which requires your authentication to do so 🔐
This means that if you do sign a malicious transaction, your locked assets can’t be drained
— Ember (@EmberWallet) January 27, 2023
Bitski also said on January 24 that it was working on similar integrations for its 2.0 wallet. Product designer Jasmine Xu said that this will cover “self custody, a dApp browser, transaction simulation previews, notifications about account activity, an in-app burner vault, and a bunch more in a few weeks.”
In its most recent blog post, Coinbase said that users will be able to “view and cancel existing token balances” in the coming weeks.
Scammers and hackers use a wide range of tools to take over transactions and get the money sent to them instead of where it was supposed to go. These kinds of features are important for crypto and NFT users.
