The sudden shutdown of Huione Guarantee has sent shockwaves across the digital guarantee market, a shadowy network involving countless online fraudsters, money launderers, and brokers of stolen information in Southeast Asia and China.

Despite this disruption, many Telegram-based marketplaces with similar operations remain unaffected and are actively growing.

Vendors Shift to Tudou

According to blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic’s latest report, Huione Guarantee’s activity has come to a halt, but its exit has triggered a migration. Vendors are being steered toward Tudou Guarantee, which has absorbed a large share of Huione’s transactions.

Before its abrupt shutdown, Huione Guarantee was operated by the Cambodia-based Huione Group. It was originally launched in 2021 with the intention of facilitating legitimate transactions involving assets like cars and real estate. Over time, however, the platform’s listings shifted focus. Leading up to its closure, much of Huione Guarantee’s activity seems geared toward supporting cyber scam operations,

The authorities finally dismantled Huione Guarantee on May 13, 2025. This Telegram-based platform processed over $27 billion in transactions, mostly involving tools and services for large-scale online scams like pig butchering. Its downfall followed a detailed investigation by Elliptic, which led Telegram to delete thousands of related channels and ban associated user accounts.

Still, Huione Guarantee represented just one node within a sprawling network of Chinese-language guarantee marketplaces. These platforms, thriving on Telegram, allow the exchange of illicit goods such as stolen data, fraudulent tech tools, and money laundering services, which are all vital to scam operations.

Huione’s USDT Activity Nears Zero

Transactions are conducted entirely in Tether’s USDT stablecoin, which ensures the ease of movement and pseudo-anonymity. In fact, Tether froze a Huione-linked wallet in July 2024 due to suspected ties to the North Korean hacking entity, Lazarus Group. After Telegram removed Huione’s public channels and usernames, the platform formally shut down, advising vendors to migrate to Tudou Guarantee.

Initially, Huione claimed it would continue facilitating private escrow services, but by late May, it announced a full cessation of operations. Elliptic said that its blockchain data confirmed this exit, as incoming USDT flows to Huione’s wallets plummeted to “negligible levels.”

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• The Merge is happening soon! This post explains how and when the upgrade will happen, along with the client versions compatible with it.
• Kiln, an Ethereum merge testnet launched in early 2022, will be shut down during the week of September 12, 2022.
• Ropsten and Rinkeby are also deprecated and scheduled to be sunset in Q4 2022 and Q3 2023 respectively.
• Users and developers should migrate to Goerli & Sepolia, which will keep being maintained and upgraded to reflect changes to the Ethereum mainnet for the forseable future.

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As previously announced, the Kiln, Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets are now deprecated and will be shut down over the coming months.

Kiln, which was launched for the purposes of testing post-merge Ethereum prior to existing testnets merging, will be shut down during the week of September 12, 2022. While anyone can run a node on the network, bootnodes and validators maintained by client and testing teams, as well as infrastructure providers, will be turned off at that point. This follows the schedule laid out in the deprecation announcement linked above.

Ropsten and Rinkeby are also considered deprecated, with a shut down date of Q4 2022 and Q2 2023 respectively. While the networks will remain active until then, infrastructure providers may gradually restrict or remove access to these networks on a shorter timeline.

Users and developers should migrate to Goerli and/or Sepolia, both of which are expected to be maintained and upgraded in accordance with Ethereum mainnet changes for the forseable future.

Expect other announcements on this blog prior to the Ropsten and Rinkeby shutdowns.

Farewell Kiln, you’ve lived up to your name

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Header photo by Karl Hedin.

As previously announced, the Ropsten network has been deprecated and will be shut down in the coming weeks. Over the past few months, infrastructure providers have gradually stopped supporting the network and validator participation rates have been steadily declining.

The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down during the December 15-31, 2022 period. After this, Ropsten will no longer be supported by client, testing or infrastructure teams.

As a reminder, the next testnet to be sunset is Rinkeby. The network will be live until mid-2023 to give users and application developers the chance to migrate to either Goerli or Sepolia. That said, Rinkeby does not support The Merge, nor will it support future network upgrades. It is no longer a feature-equivalent replica of the Ethereum mainnet.

The Merge and legacy testnet deprecations have provided an opportunity for the Ethereum community to rethink its broader approach to test networks. Proposals around purpose-specific networks for stakers vs. developers, end-of-life norms for testnets and more are being discussed on Ethereum Magicians and in community calls. If you have strong opinions about the future of Ethereum testnets, now is the time to voice them!

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Cover image by Micael Widell

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