February 5, 2023. There are just so many KYC service providers. How can one determine if a specific project or token has been officially KYC'ed and by whom? A simple approach is to Google the token address or the project name. The challenge with this approach is that there are many tokens with similar names thus the results may not be as expected and will likely to result in false positive. The most precise approach would be to use the token address, however, you will find that the approach will return many unusable results using the google search method.
If you know the KYC service provider (e.g., AssureDefi, Certik or others), you can then search for the project name and their details on the KYC service provider's web site. However, most end-users do not know the KYC service providers for the project, thus they would have to search all possible KYC service providers, which the end-users will not likely to do. Accordingly, for most cases, end-users rely on the project itself to name the KYC service provider. As a result, this can lead to the falsification of records which is a prevalent issue with some of these token projects as reported by Certik.
We also noted that that the implementation of the repository of the KYC register by the KYC service provider may impact how information can be verified by end-users. We observed in our research that KYC registers are maintained using :
github
notion
proprietary databases
Most datasets hold several hundreds of records. Some offer search capability, others do not. Due to size number of records, end-users will need to navigate multiple pages as the details are buried so deep to obtain the key information.
Another challenge you may run into when searching for specific token contract or KYC information is that these details are provided by the KYC service providers as KYC certificates in non-searchable image format, thus making difficult for individuals to verify the KYC through web searches. We find these designs as inefficient and non-value added.
Lastly, not all KYC service providers are transparent about updating these records on their site when they have identified an incident with a KYC'ed project. Because of this opaqueness, there is a risk of end-users making decision with incorrect information.
Web3REKT attempts to solve this issue by implementing an integrated data set of KYC information collected from major KYC service providers. Through our research, we have identified several major KYC providers, and made effort to connect and maintain their information with the Web3REKT KYC database. Our approach allows:
A single source for all KYC related search
Search can make by project name, contract address, etc.
Our KYC data set is automatically updated daily. Data sources we currently supported include:
AssureDeFi
Certik KYC
ContractChecker
PinkSale
SolidProof
Legacy information from the following data sources (e.g., image based) have also been imported as well but are being updated on a monthly basis:
Coinscope
Cyberscope
Please keep in mind that we may not continue to support image extraction for these KYC certificates in image format.
As searches are made, our KYC data set also correlates to search query to any known incident and/or known labels. Of course, you are caution to refer to the source provided for any specific information.
Please also noted that not all information are available because different KYC providers report different information due to a lack of known KYC standard.
It is our goal to add additional KYC providers so reach out and team up to make web3 space safer!.