Parity Multisig
Last changed 2026-11-02 · Fact-check review — Fact-check review (verdict: revise): the reviewer checked the page's claims against its sources; the trust score was recalculated from the page's findings, 57 → 58. Version history →
Why this score
| Every page starts at | 65 |
| Concerns that are not fraud | -6.4 |
| Incidents it suffered (e.g. hacks) | -9.6 |
| Problems around it, caused by others | -0.8 |
| Long-running | +10 |
| Sum | 58 |
- 1 section set aside: the claims did not hold up in a fact-check, pending correction.
Score: 58/100 (kept between 0 and 100)
How scoring works →Page reliability: Fact-checked 2026-11-02 · 7 of 9 claims confirmed · 1 need better sources · 1 disputed
anchored·3b3D6X…sA6pSummary
Parity Multisig was a multi-signature wallet implementation developed by Parity Technologies, founded by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood. The software suffered two catastrophic security failures in 2017: a July hack in which 153,037 ETH (approximately $30–32 million at the time) was stolen from three Ethereum project wallets via an unguarded initialization function, and a November incident in which GitHub user devops199 accidentally triggered a self-destruct on the shared library contract, permanently freezing 513,774 ETH (approximately $150–280 million at the time) across 587 wallets. The frozen funds have never been recovered, and the July 2017 attacker resumed laundering stolen ETH through the exchange eXch in May 2024 after seven years of inactivity.
Connected Entities
7 entities · 60 linked investigations- Parity Multisig→mentioned with→Polkadot(80%)
- Parity Multisig→mentioned with→Ethereum(80%)
- Parity Multisig→mentioned with→eXch(70%)
- Ethereum Foundation→mentioned with→Ethereum(80%)
- Ethereum Classic→mentioned with→Ethereum(80%)
- Polkadot→mentioned with→Ethereum(65%)
- eXch→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
- Ethereum Foundation→mentioned with→Vitalik Buterin(80%)
- Ethereum→mentioned with→Ethereum Classic(80%)
- Ethereum→mentioned with→Ethereum Foundation(80%)
- + 5 more
Timeline(10 events)
19 July 2017
Attacker exploits unguarded initWallet() function in Parity Multisig WalletLibrary, stealing 153,037 ETH (~$30-32M) from Aeternity, Swarm City, and Edgeless
19 July 2017
White Hat Group uses the same exploit to drain and rescue approximately 377,000 ETH from other vulnerable Parity wallets before additional theft occurs
20 July 2017
Parity Technologies deploys replacement WalletLibrary contract without initializing it, inadvertently leaving a new critical vulnerability
August 2017
GitHub issue filed recommending auto-initialization of the library contract; Parity classifies it as a convenience enhancement and does not implement the fix
6 November 2017
GitHub user devops199 calls initWallet() on the uninitialized library contract, becomes its owner, then calls kill(), permanently destroying it and freezing 513,774 ETH across 587 wallets
8 November 2017
Parity Technologies publicly announces the library self-destruct incident and begins postmortem analysis
15 November 2017
Parity publishes postmortem on the library self-destruct incident, acknowledging the prior known-but-unaddressed vulnerability
April 2018
Parity submits EIP-999 to the Ethereum community, proposing a protocol-level state change to restore the destroyed library contract and unfreeze 513,774 ETH (now worth ~$280-330M)
30 April 2018
Community coin-vote on EIP-999 concludes with approximately 55% voting against; proposal is rejected and frozen funds remain inaccessible
13 May 2024
July 2017 Parity hacker resumes on-chain activity after seven years of inactivity, transferring ~3,050 ETH (~$9M) to exchange eXch using multiple intermediate addresses
Decision Log
- slot 464447241 · hash FdHaBnvs3iXcGubshH2pF9AgRtL4Ugmo6SvDWCbxaV3c
- slot 464447235 · hash CvfonodeyY3UTWMbTpEhPFDSGcNsuTa94tktSJrMBND
- slot 464447230 · hash BCFaoscBhD2YRFHFZghvHuhpY5otuZL3FpJZqJkoLE29
- slot 455368630 · hash 7k3Xw4erDjB97WrjBQ98FMg2mptAbZ8FjUnuXfBShbNJ
- slot 422120686 · hash 91AVB8AmsUnvnAiuM1zyvY71o3PHxN4q6arQnxXycFB
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (5 decisions). 19 of 25 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:55:01 AM
last updated: 11/2/2026, 9:36:04 AM
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