Arkham Intelligence Unmasks Wallets, Raises Questions on Privacy
Arkham Intelligence is an analytics platform that assigns names to blockchain addresses, providing a unique tool for investors and analysts. Founded in 2020, the company uses machine learning to determine and catalogue the owners of blockchain addresses, creating a network map of connections between addresses and entities. The platform advertises that it translates raw transactions into clear network maps and provides a searchable database of crypto users whose transactions can be filtered.
The analytics platform attaches names to blockchain addresses and has been paying bounties for unmasking wallets since July 2023. What comes out of it, where the assignment goes wrong, and how you keep your own trail shorter are all key questions for investors.
The assignment arises from two ingredients: behaviour on the chain itself and knowledge from outside. Traces on the chain, such as clustering and recurring patterns, are combined with public sources, such as annual reports and social media posts, to link a string of characters to a name.
Out of many small traces, a single label emerges in the end. The platform's data has played a role in criminal proceedings, including the case against the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and helped in describing money laundering patterns.
Tracing stolen coins is also a key feature of the platform. After a theft, analysis is the only tool a victim has left at all. The sequence is the same in almost every case, and it can be read along.
An assignment is a claim, not an extract from the land register. A label on an address is the result of an inference, and inferences can be wrong.