Asset Reality Partners with MetaMask to Help Victims of Scams Recover Their Stolen Digital Assets

Asset Reality is delighted to announce a new partnership with Metamask, the world’s largest digital wallet provider. This partnership represents an industry-first approach to improving digital asset recovery around the world. ‍ Metamask is a non-custodial software that run’s on the user’s device, similar to a web browser. In January, they exceeded over 30 million monthly active users, making them the most popular Web3 wallet and browser globally. Just like a physical wallet in somebody’s back pocket, Metamask doesn’t have any access to users’ funds so the most important member of the security team is the user themselves. Over the last few years, economic activity on web3 has grown exponentially. While this growth has attracted a number of highly innovative applications that will help redefine the future of financial services and the creator economy, it has also drawn the attention of online scammers and thieves. Due to the high number of users on the platform, Metamask is a common target for traditional scamming techniques like phishing. Through our partnership with Metamask, we’ll be helping the victims of these scams to recover their digital assets whenever possible. This support will be available for all MetaMask users globally who have been victims of scams, including across their most active markets in the United States, the UK, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Brazil, France, Germany or Nigeria. Acting as the case handler for Metamask’s affected users, Asset Reality will be taking on the heavy lifting to build an investigation into the scams operations, greatly increasing the likelihood of recovering the funds and bringing the scammers to justice. Victims will still need to report their losses through the official MetaMask platform.

The Power of the Collective

According to Action Fraud, victims of crypto-related fraud lose an average of $25k. Losses can be as low as $50 USD, they can occasionally exceed over $1m USD. Traditional recovery processes use civil litigation and usually involve instructing lawyers, serving notices to exchanges or freezing accounts.

Unfortunately, this process takes a long time since there isn’t a dedicated process for crypto dispute resolution and the costs incurred can be in excess of $75k USD! This means that victims of scams often experience a lot of difficulties when they’re trying to get sufficient resources and attention from law enforcement. While our services will be free for Metamask users, they might still need to cover legal costs if they decide that pursuing recovery makes economic sense for them. However, if these legal costs are too high, we’ll help the victims to join forces and pursue collective action as a group, building a much larger forensic investigation against a scam operation. There might be hundreds of victims for the largest kinds, so banding together gives them a better chance of success in crypto asset recovery cases. By providing identifiable information, a person who has lost a smaller amount still has the opportunity to recover their funds if larger victims, and Metamask’s parent company ConsenSys, pursue the larger scale scam operations.

No Claim Too Small

Dan Finlay, Co-Founder of Metamask, was keen to stress how vital this type of group action is:

“Helping users investigate and recover lost funds is a strategic tool in a multi-faceted strategy that we are continuously executing that includes improving security, user education, and new ways to back up assets. Through this industry-leading partnership with Asset Reality, ConsenSys and MetaMask want to allow victims to join together, build cases against these scam operations and bring them to justice. It's really important that victims of hacks come forward, no matter how small. They could reveal or be the starting point of a wider investigation and create the opportunity to aggregate claims to commence potential legal action.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Aidan Larkin, our Co-Founder & CEO, said:

“When a user has funds stolen, often due to being scammed into handing over their passwords or Secret Recovery Phrase, they often have nowhere to turn to, in what is an incredibly difficult time for them emotionally and financially. We see losses across the entire crypto eco-system ranging from hundreds to millions of dollars in value. We’re proud to be partnering with ConsenSys and MetaMask to deliver this important service which will ultimately improve users’ experience in dealing with these situations.”

How Will Users Benefit

Losing money to a scam can be a trying and difficult experience for users to go through, so we’ve tried to make this process as simple as possible.

1. A user’s account is compromised and their fund are stolen through a scam. Victims will ned to contact MetaMask via the official platform to report their losses and begin an investigation.

2. Metamask support will interview affected users to find out how they were compromised and request any relevant information about phishing websites, vectors and the lost funds.

3. After providing users with safety tips, Metamask support will direct the user to open a case with Asset Reality through a page on metamask.io

4. Asset Reality will take over communication with the user and proactively keep them updated on the status of their case as the investigation progresses.

‍

ABOUT CONSENSYS

ConsenSys is a leading Ethereum and decentralized protocols software company enabling developers, enterprises, and people worldwide to build next-generation applications, launch modern financial infrastructure, and access the decentralized web.

Their product suite serves millions of users, supports billions of blockchain-based queries and handles billions of dollars in digital assets. It includes the platforms Infura, Quorum, Codefi, Truffle, Diligence, ConsenSys NFT and the largest self-custody digital wallet in the world, Metamask. ‍

ABOUT ASSET REALITY

Asset Reality is the world's first end-to-end solution for complex assets. Its platform provides services and tools to public and private sector companies investigating, managing and recovering assets. From helping crypto companies support victims of fraud, to enabling governments to manage and realise portfolios of seized assets, its mission is to improve asset recovery for victims and society.

Launched via the Techstars accelerator programme, Asset Reality partners with leading digital custodians, blockchain analytic companies and asset recovery practitioners to give users access to the services they need on one easy-to-use platform.

‍

If you’re a company that wants to learn more about our services or our work in crypto asset recovery, contact crypto@assetreality.com

For press enquiries, contact comms@assetreality.com