Ask HN: Verifying a wallet before sending Funds in DeFi

19 SageMind 2 5/22/2025, 7:29:27 AM
I’ve been experimenting with some DeFi projects lately and am starting to get stressed about the risk around sending funds to the wrong wallet address or a malicious wallet address. With all of the scams happening I am curious about what practical steps people take to verify a wallet before sending funds.

Do you have any tools or methods you use to check the history or good standing of a crypto wallet address? I am hoping to find something lighter than a forensic wallet wrecker that would be reliable to use. Interested to see how others process this.

Comments (2)

curiousObject · 4h ago
Use a hardware wallet to protect you from malware on your own devices

Split your money into smaller amounts in separate addresses to protect yourself from a malevolent smart contract that drains all the funds in an address

Check the receiving address in a blockchain explorer. Does its past activity align with the purposes of the receiving address?

Send a smaller transaction first, and wait a a few minutes to see the results, if the fee is small enough to make that acceptable

JaxonRyder121 · 2h ago
In DeFi, we trust contracts but not addresses. Maybe time to flip that logic.