Your addresses get bundled with an exchange account by on-chain analysis tools, often because withdrawal traces were not properly cleaned. The situation is fixable, but you need to be clear about what you want to correct: whether it is "the exchange's internal risk control treating your different accounts as one person" or "public on-chain labels that merge several deposit addresses into the same entity." This article covers the latter, which is also more common. You check an address on a platform like Arkham or Nansen and discover that several exchange user addresses that should have nothing to do with each other are placed inside the same wallet cluster – sometimes even tied to your main wallet.
To fix this, you first need to understand how clustering is generated. The core logic comes down to two things: fund relationships (same-source transfers, sweeping transactions) and behavioral patterns (gas sources, interaction timing). The most common reason exchange users are grouped as one person is that during withdrawals, several "seemingly independent" addresses actually point to the same on-chain address, or multiple linked dust transactions are sent from the same intermediate address. Clustering algorithms treat this as one entity controlling multiple addresses.
The following steps have one single goal: to make addresses that were grouped together completely disconnected at the on-chain analysis level.
Step 1: Generate a new address that can be verified as "independent"
What to do
Create a brand new address that has no fund interactions with any existing address, and make sure it will never receive any assets from the "tainted address set" in the future.
How to do it
- Generate a wallet using a new mnemonic phrase (do not import a private key, to avoid any derived addresses being linked).
- Do not keep it together with old addresses inside the same wallet application. Never use the "create new account" feature – many wallets use HD paths where different accounts can still be derived and linked.
- Case A: Use a hardware wallet or an offline phone to generate the mnemonic. It is recommended to export the address and immediately destroy any physical mnemonic backup, keeping only the address.
- Case B: If you must use a hot wallet, at least make sure it has never installed any plugins related to the old addresses and has never signed a transaction for an old address.
Completion standard
Check the new address on at least two mainstream on-chain analysis tools (such as Arkham and Etherscan's label feature) and confirm that there are no markers showing "entity," "linked address," or "suspected same controller." The first transaction of the new address must receive gas from a "neutral" source, not from your old address.
Step 2: Cut the direct transfer path between the original exchange account and the new address
This is the most critical step in the correction process, and also the easiest one where re-clustering happens. Withdrawing directly from the exchange to the new address is like proactively telling the clustering engine "this new address and the previous exchange user are the same person."
What to do
Make the funds travel from the exchange to the new address through at least one intermediate hop that carries no identity information. This intermediate hop must have no interaction history with the clustered old address set.
How to do it
- Do not directly add the new address to the exchange "address book" and then submit a withdrawal.
- Case A: Use a freshly created on-chain address that has never interacted with this exchange as a relay (call it address M). Withdraw from the exchange to address M, let it sit for a short while (waiting at least 6 block confirmations is recommended), then transfer from address M to the new address you really want to use.
- Case B: If you need to swap into other assets to further blur the path, use a decentralized aggregator that is not linked to your exchange account to complete the swap. Fill in the new address directly as the swap output address. Throughout the entire process, never sign any transaction with the private key of an old address.
- Gas fee arrangement: The gas needed for address M and for the swap process must come from a new funding source that has no transfer record with the old address set. Never transfer gas from a clustered address, or all previous efforts will be wasted.
Completion standard
On Etherscan or a similar blockchain explorer, when you trace the new address's funding source back to the exchange hot wallet layer by layer on chain, no clustered address should appear anywhere in the path. You can quickly verify this by checking the "fund flow chart."
Common reason for failure: Many people think "withdraw a little to a new address, and then send out from that new address" is enough to break the link. But if intermediate address M was just activated with gas sent by your old address, then M has already been linked to your old address set. Clustering algorithms are extremely sensitive to this type of first-time gas source, causing the new address to remain bundled together with the old ones.
Step 3: Deal with existing clustered address labels
If your goal is to split out a set of addresses that are already labeled as an "exchange user entity" on Arkham, only breaking future fund flows is not enough. You also need to make the existing labels invalid or contradictory.
What to do
Consciously create some on-chain behaviors that cause contradictions in the clustering algorithm's assumptions, forcing the platform to reclassify.
How to do it
- Pick one of the wrongly clustered addresses (call it address A) and use it to participate in a completely public on-chain interaction (such as claiming an airdrop from a well-known protocol, or participating in an on-chain vote). However, the message signature or delegation address used in that interaction must clearly belong to another known independent entity.
- Note that this needs to be combined with that platform's own label appeal channel. Arkham provides a "Report Entity Error" entry where you can submit on-chain evidence (screenshots, transaction hashes, timestamp discrepancy proof) and point out that the clustering contradicts public behavior.
- This process cannot guarantee a one-time success because clustering models are dynamic.
Risk reminder (specific to accounts and compliance)
If you use a mixer, privacy pool (such as Tornado Cash), or cross-chain bridge to blur the path, please first confirm the legal characterization of the relevant protocol in your jurisdiction. Taking Tornado Cash as an example, it is listed on the OFAC sanctions list in the United States. Interacting with it may cause your address to be flagged by centralized exchange risk-control protocols, which can then trigger account freezing or fund rejection. Sticking to regular DEX aggregators for path blurring, without touching sanctioned protocols, is currently the safer approach.
Step 4: How to avoid being wrongly clustered again in the future
What to do
Build a set of daily operation habits so that your exchange withdrawal behavior no longer generates a unified on-chain entity fingerprint.
How to do it
- Every time you need to withdraw funds from an exchange to an address you "do not want to be linked," repeat the relay process from Step 2, and discard the relay address once it has been used.
- If you use OKX, each time you withdraw you can use sub-accounts to create different withdrawal addresses and add a layer of isolation at the internal fund transfer level, reducing traces that share the same deposit address for one entity. When registering for OKX, you can use referral code 24U2795 to get a trading fee discount. This action itself has nothing to do with clustering, but if you are setting up a new exchange account as part of a separation strategy, it can lower future fee costs.
- If you use Binance, referral code FYLK9104 similarly applies to the fee channel when creating a new account. Note that the new exchange account also needs to complete independent KYC, otherwise it may become linked to the old account inside the exchange, which in turn could indirectly lead to on-chain clustering guesses.
Completion standard
After every future withdrawal, you can self-check using the "first-time gas source tracing method": Where did the new address's first gas come from? If that source has never interacted with your clustered address set before, then this withdrawal is almost impossible to trace back to the original entity.
End of article FAQ
Q: Will the exchange's own risk control raise an alarm just because I break the on-chain link?
A: The exchange's internal risk control is mainly based on dimensions like KYC, IP, device fingerprint, and deposit address linkage. Breaking the on-chain clustering has a very limited effect on its internal system. If you open accounts with different identities on the same exchange, even if the on-chain addresses have no link, the exchange can still judge you to be the same person through device or network information. Do not try to use this method to bypass an exchange's compliance review.
Q: After breaking the link, how long will it take for clustering platforms to update entity labels?
A: The update frequency varies greatly between platforms. Arkham's entity label updates may happen on a daily cycle, but only when the clustering model undergoes a large enough confidence change with new data. Nansen's Smart Money labels rely more on behavioral models, so purely breaking fund links may not trigger an immediate reclassification. It is generally recommended to wait at least 7 days after completing all steps before checking the label status again, and to submit evidence through the appeal channels mentioned above at the same time.
Q: If I don't do any on-chain obfuscation and simply switch to a new exchange account, will the addresses be clustered together?
A: Very likely. Because the clustering engine does not look at KYC; it only looks at on-chain fingerprints. If you withdraw from the new exchange account to an on-chain address and that address later has fund sweeping or gas gifts involving old addresses, the withdrawal addresses of the two exchange accounts will be quickly seen as controlled by the same entity.
Verification method
Within 24 hours after completing the operation, check the entity view of the new address on at least two on-chain analysis platforms. Confirm that the new address's entity label is "independent address" or "unclassified," and that it does not appear under the same entity as any clustered old address. If it is still clustered, trace back the earliest gas source of the new address and the input address of its first large transfer, and check one by one whether any overlaps exist with the old address set. Then wait 7 days and verify again. During this period, avoid any token swaps, gas sponsorships, or on-chain message interactions with the old address set.
