Hop Distance

Hop Distance

Hop distance is the number of transactions separating a wallet from a risky address in its transaction graph. A wallet that received funds directly from a sanctioned address has a hop distance of one; a wallet that received funds from an address that itself received funds from that sanctioned address has a hop distance of two, and so on.

What it means

Risk generally decreases as hop distance increases, but not in a simple linear way, and not to zero — funds don't become "clean" just because enough intermediate wallets have handled them. Most screening methodologies, FreezeRadar included, apply meaningfully reduced but still non-zero weight at two and three hops, and treat direct exposure at one hop as far more serious than exposure several hops removed.

Hop distance alone is an incomplete measure without also considering counterparty concentration and the total volume involved at each hop — a wallet three hops from a sanctioned address through a large, diversified exchange is very different from one three hops away through a tight, low-volume chain of wallets that appears specifically constructed to launder that exposure.

Real-world example

A wallet that received a direct transfer from a wallet drained in a known exploit (one hop) is treated far more seriously than one that received funds from a large exchange that, among millions of other deposits, also once received funds from that exploit (many effective hops, heavily diluted).

Related terms

• Counterparty Concentration
• Provenance
• Attribution Confidence

In FreezeRadar

FreezeRadar's finding types explicitly encode hop distance — direct match, one-hop exposure, two-hop exposure, and beyond — so a scan result is specific about how close the connection actually is.

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