Accidental Transfer of $150,000+ in STEEM Reveals Web of Connected Accounts

It's interesting what you can find on the blockchain when you're just poking around.

Accidental Transfer

@minorityreport, an account that was created back in August of 2016, recently received 137,467.872 STEEM from @ashleigh, an account that was created through proof-of-work mining (back when that was still a possibility) in March of 2016.

Until the transfer, @minorityreport appeared to be powering down the 5 STEEM that was originally granted to the account in August.

Now, after some negotiation, it seems that the account has changed hands.

A New Account Enters The Fray

In this back and forth we see that a new account, @alpha, has now gotten involved, implying that the two accounts are connected.

Let's take a look at their humble beginnings. These accounts are very similar to each other:

Both of these accounts started in late-March, and on the exact same day selected @blocktrades as a proxy. While they may or may not be connected to @blocktrades, @ashleigh is included in @blocktrades withdrawal path. It seems, at a bare minimum, that @alpha and @ashleigh do share the same owner as they are interconnected, along with several other accounts, including: @aguilar, @kevphanis, @bavihm, @darah, @augusta, @aftergut, @adrian, @chana, @graavor, and @abdul.

The Rabbit Hole Deepens

This tangled web gets a little more interesting when you see that most of the accounts mentioned above have selected @minority-report (not to be confused with @minorityreport) as a proxy. In fact, @minority-report is a proxy for 25 accounts with a total of 3 posts between them. @minority-report has approved only two witnesses: @gtg and @blocktrades.

I will be researching this even deeper, as it seems (disclaimer: I don't know for certain) that @blocktrades has control of several accounts that are in turn in control of several other accounts that all have voted for @blocktrades as a witness. I don't know what connection @gtg has, as I haven't gone down that rabbit hole just yet, but I will be looking into that in more depth soon.

All of these accounts seem to constantly be moving funds between @poloniex, @bittrex, @openledger, and each other, so it is easy to see how @ashleigh might have sent funds to the wrong @minorityreport. Luckily for @minorityreport, that mistake seems to have turned into a more than $11,000 windfall.

Interested to hear community thoughts on this, and happy to hear any corrections if I have wrongly made assumptions.