The Greed Trap: Uncovering Intrinsic Ethereum Honeypots Through Symbolic Execution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Smart contracts are computer programs that run on blockchain networks, enabling secure, transparent, and decentralized transactions. However, the security of smart contracts has always been a critical issue in the blockchain community. One major concern in recent years is the proliferation of honeypots - malicious contracts that deceive users into depositing funds, only to discover that they cannot withdraw their money and have lost their original deposit. In this research, we present a novel classification of honeypots and introduce a new type of contract that allows for the development of a future-proof method for detecting honeypots based on the contract owner and cash flow. We implement this method in a detection tool called HoneyVader, which uses symbolic execution to identify real-world honeypot contracts. Our tool analyzes over 2 million contracts deployed on the Ethereum network, detecting 139 honeypots. By using HoneyVader, we are able to uncover previously unknown zero-day honeypots and new techniques used by attackers, in addition to the ones identified in previous works.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".