Scams to know before you own a name
Most of them need one of two things from you: your recovery phrase or a signature. Refuse both and almost nothing on this page can reach you.
Most of them need one of two things from you: your recovery phrase or a signature. Refuse both and almost nothing on this page can reach you.
Almost every scam in this area ends the same way: you type your recovery phrase somewhere, or you sign a transaction you did not read. A Web3 name is held in your wallet and a transfer out of it is final — there is no chargeback and no dispute process. So the defence is not spotting every trick. It is refusing the two actions every trick needs.
Never type your recovery phrase anywhere except into your own wallet when restoring it. Never sign a transaction or approval from a site you reached through a link someone sent you. Everything below is a variation on getting you to do one of these two things.
You post a question in a public channel and someone replies privately offering to help. They are not support. Real providers do not start conversations in direct messages, and no genuine support process needs your recovery phrase or a screen share of your wallet.
A message, email or pop-up says your name will expire, be suspended or be lost unless you verify. Web3 names do not expire, so the premise is false. The page it links to asks for your phrase or a signature, and either one hands the wallet over.
A search ad or a link leads to a page that copies the provider’s design on a slightly different address — one letter changed, a different ending, an extra word. Type the provider’s address yourself or use a bookmark you saved earlier. Do not trust the first result of a search for it.
Some characters from other alphabets look identical to Latin letters. A name that appears to read shop.chainwallet can be spelled with a Cyrillic letter and belong to someone else. Before sending money to a name, copy it into your wallet and check that it resolves to the address you expect — and for anything large, send a small amount first.
Someone offers a high price for a name you own, then asks you to pay a small fee, connect to their escrow site or sign a listing. The fee is the scam and the signature is the theft. Real sales happen on a marketplace where the buyer pays first.
A token or a name appears in your wallet unasked, with a link to claim something. Interacting with it can trigger an approval that drains the wallet. Ignore what you did not ask for. This is the strongest reason to keep names in a wallet you use for nothing else.
Act on the assumption that the wallet is compromised. Create a new wallet with a new recovery phrase, written on paper, and move every name and every coin you still control into it. Then stop using the old wallet completely — not just for now.
Do not reply to the scammer, and do not pay anyone who offers to recover what was taken. Recovery offers after a theft are a second, well-known scam aimed at people who have just been robbed.
If a business name was affected, tell the people who use it. A name that now points somewhere else can be used to collect payments meant for you, so a public notice on your other channels matters more than it seems.
Treat any unsolicited message about your name as suspect, whatever channel it comes through. If something needs your attention, log in to the provider yourself by typing its address, and check there.
Not always, but the common version is. Real buyers make an offer through a marketplace and pay there. Anyone asking you to pay a fee, verify the wallet or connect to their site before the sale is not buying anything.
Move any names and funds you still control to a new wallet with a new recovery phrase, then stop using the old one. Revoking approvals helps only if nothing has been taken yet; moving to a fresh wallet is the safer assumption.
Generally no. A transfer out of your wallet is final. That is why every item on this page is about prevention rather than recovery.
Knowing where a Web3 name actually works is the other half of using one safely.