Arkham (ARKM): the future of crypto intelligence?

Crypto intelligence represents a pivotal sector within the cryptocurrency industry, aimed at enhancing insight and transparency in a realm traditionally characterized by anonymity and robust user privacy. This niche involves companies that provide a spectrum of products including blockchain analysis tools, market research services, and specialized consultancy. Their mission is to amass analysis and insights concerning cryptocurrencies, the blockchain technology they rest on, and the user base they attract.

The core mission of crypto intelligence is straightforward: to furnish crypto users with the visibility of data and insights, enabling them to make well-informed decisions. Such information and the resultant decisions have the potential to combat fraud, lower the barriers to adoption, uncover new projects, and facilitate more effective trading strategies. However, the advent of crypto intelligence also introduces a critical need to maintain a balance between insightful analysis and the preservation of privacy.

Arkham Intelligence, a pioneering Texas-based startup, is at the forefront of driving innovation in the crypto intelligence space. Its whitepaper reveals a platform designed to systematically analyze and remove the veil of anonymity from blockchain transactions, thereby illuminating the identities of individuals and entities behind blockchain activities. In July 2023, Arkham expanded its offerings with the debut of the first on-chain intelligence marketplace, a platform where users can exchange intelligence pertaining to specific crypto wallet addresses.

The realm of crypto profitability extends beyond mere market timing, hinging significantly on the utilization of on-chain data. Blockchains are rife with cryptic data that, when decoded accurately, can simplify the trading and holding experience. This underscores the importance of platforms like Arkham Intelligence. Distinct from other analytics platforms such as Cipher Trace, Chainalysis, and Elliptic, Arkham delves into deeper investigative insights, empowering users to profit, assuming they can interpret these insights aptly.

Moreover, while many traders bank on technical analysis to forecast the price movements of crypto assets, this approach alone falls short in providing a precise indicator of future price trends. As the crypto and blockchain landscape evolves, it becomes clear that transaction analysis, a methodology tailored to crypto, is essential for deeper insights into price movements. Blockchain transactions, though inherently public and permanently recorded, are veiled in pseudonymity, posing challenges in tracking and analyzing them. Arkham's initiative to deanonymize and scrutinize blockchain data aims to foster a more transparent and liquid crypto industry, instilling confidence even among the most conservative traders to pursue profits.

What Is Arkham Intelligence?

Arkham stands at the forefront of the cryptocurrency intelligence sector, focusing on demystifying and scrutinizing blockchain transactions to link them with actual individuals and organizations. This initiative is divided into two main segments: a sophisticated intelligence platform and the innovative Arkham Intel Exchange.

The intelligence facet of Arkham leverages artificial intelligence (AI) technology to enhance the efficiency and scope of data collection and analysis. On the other hand, the Arkham Intel Exchange introduces a unique marketplace model, employing a system of rewards and auctions. Here, information pertaining to specific addresses and transactions can be exchanged using Arkham's proprietary cryptocurrency, ARKM.

Arkham integration with major crypto projects

Arkham aspires to revolutionize the crypto intelligence sector by creating a platform that offers comprehensive blockchain insights, caters to a variety of applications, and remains accessible to a broad audience. To bring this vision into reality, Arkham has strategically aligned itself with leading entities within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, enhancing its analytical capabilities across the Ethereum blockchain and other networks.

Expanding its reach means potentially unlocking more extensive data sets, enabling deeper analytical insights, and facilitating improved results for users. Among Arkham’s notable strategic collaborations are:

Base: Early in 2023, Arkham embraced support for Base, a layer 2 solution fostered by Coinbase, designed to enhance the Ethereum network's scalability. This collaboration offers Base users insightful on-chain analysis, crucial for informed decision-making. Presently, the Base ecosystem encompasses over 100 decentralized applications (DApps) and service providers.

BNB Chain: In February 2023, Arkham announced its integration with BNB Chain, renowned for its focus on building Web3 DApps. This integration widens Arkham’s analytical scope significantly, enabling comprehensive transaction tracking and cross-chain asset flow analysis within the smart-contract domain.

Polygon: Arkham extends its analytical services to the Polygon network, facilitating detailed tracking and identification of wallets and entities within both Polygon and Ethereum frameworks. Polygon's collaborations with major brands like Disney and Starbucks for NFT and blockchain initiatives respectively, present Arkham users with unique analytical opportunities across diverse Web3 applications.

Optimism: Incorporating Optimism into its suite of supported networks, Arkham enhances its multichain analysis capabilities, adding to its partnerships with networks like Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Tron. Optimism, known for its rapid growth and status as the pioneering optimistic rollup, plays a crucial role in scaling Ethereum, further broadening the analytical prospects available to Arkham users.

By forging these strategic partnerships, Arkham significantly boosts its ability to offer rich, actionable insights across a wide array of blockchain environments, underscoring its commitment to making crypto intelligence both comprehensive and universally accessible.

What Does Arkham Aim to Achieve?

While platforms such as Chainalysis have carved a niche in providing blockchain analysis primarily to heavyweight entities like governmental bodies and trading platforms, Arkham sets its sights on democratizing crypto intelligence. It aims to empower both individual crypto enthusiasts and institutions with the tools to engage in self-regulation, thereby fostering a more secure and genuinely decentralized financial (DeFi) landscape.

The challenges plaguing centralized exchanges (CEXs) and the broader DeFi ecosystem are manifold, yet many can be alleviated through the adoption of self-regulatory practices. Despite centralized platforms employing Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols to align with regulatory standards, these measures are not foolproof. Weak security frameworks can be exploited by malicious actors, leveraging fake or stolen identities to compromise the platform's integrity.

The debate surrounding proof of reserves (PoR) further accentuates the need for self-regulation. Although PoR aims to enhance transparency by verifying the existence of assets at a given moment, its effectiveness is limited. The dynamic nature of cryptocurrency transactions means that such snapshots quickly become outdated, failing to provide a thorough audit.

In the DeFi realm, the imperative for self-regulation is even more pronounced. The transparency inherent in token distribution schedules permits users to verify data accuracy and monitor updates closely. Moreover, the anonymity afforded by DeFi facilitates money laundering activities, with crypto mixers obscuring the trails of transactions. Embracing self-regulation enables users to safeguard their data and financial activities, diminishing the dependence on intermediaries and advancing a secure, decentralized finance ecosystem.

Enhanced transparency within the cryptocurrency sector promises a more equitable market landscape, where the activities of influential players, or "whales", can be more readily identified. However, Arkham's model of compensating users for sharing intelligence has sparked debate among the crypto community, with critics arguing that it might compromise ethical standards by incentivizing the trade of private information.

Arkham Intelligence Key Features

Arkham's platform is spearheading the integration of AI in crypto analysis with its advanced system, Ultra, which amalgamates both on-chain and off-chain data into a unified information stream. This data is then meticulously organized and made accessible through the Profiler interface, where users can delve into both the real-time and historical activities of any given entity or individual.

The Profiler offers insights through four distinct lenses:

Portfolio: This feature showcases both current and historical data on the blockchain assets held by a particular address. It organizes assets by token and blockchain, providing a comprehensive view of an entity's holdings.
Historical Performance: Users can track the total balance history and analyze historical profit and loss figures, presented in USD, to gauge financial performance over time.
Counterparties: This section breaks down exchange activity by volume, distinguishing between deposits and withdrawals. It also highlights the top counterparties involved with the address or entity by volume, offering insights into their network.
Transactions: With this feature, users have access to an exhaustive transaction history that is continuously updated. The platform allows for filtering across various dimensions, simplifying the process of pinpointing specific transactions.

Beyond the Profiler, Arkham enhances its user experience with additional tools designed for comprehensive analysis. The Visualizer tool, for instance, enables the exploration of relationships between addresses or entities, with customizable filters to narrow down on particular transactions. Alerts can be set up to keep track of transactions flagged by Arkham filters, ensuring users remain informed of significant activities. Additionally, the Dashboard feature allows for the creation of personalized data feeds. These dashboards can be shared externally via URL, facilitating collaboration and sharing of insights among users or within communities.

Through these features, Arkham not only provides a detailed examination of blockchain activities but also fosters a more connected and informed crypto community, enabling users to stay ahead in the dynamic and often opaque world of cryptocurrency.

Arkham Evolution in the Crypto Analytics Sphere

The realm of crypto analytics is essentially an offshoot of crypto intelligence. While the latter encompasses a broad spectrum of both quantitative and qualitative aspects, analytics hones in on dissecting the plethora of data spawned by cryptocurrency transactions to derive actionable insights. In an environment as unpredictable as the crypto market, tools that offer insights, surveillance, and analytical capabilities to navigate this volatility are invaluable to stakeholders across the spectrum.

Crypto analytics tools provide users with critical data regarding trading volumes, market movements, price fluctuations, and various blockchain-specific metrics. This level of insight not only facilitates more informed trading decisions but also aids in uncovering fraudulent activities and promotes a culture of self-regulation within the crypto sphere.

Enhancing Analytics Through AI: Arkham Approach

Arkham Intelligence plays a pivotal role within the crypto analytics landscape through its development of an advanced, AI-driven algorithm for address matching, known as Ultra. This technology aggregates data from an extensive array of sources, including both on-chain and off-chain environments across multiple blockchains, effectively connecting blockchain addresses to tangible entities. This comprehensive approach offers a detailed view of the actors in the cryptocurrency domain and their respective actions.

At the heart of Arkham's offerings is the Profiler platform, which provides users with an exhaustive, real-time snapshot of an entity or address's activities. This encompasses a wide range of data points, including transaction histories, portfolio compositions, balance fluctuations, profit and loss statements, exchange interactions, and primary transaction partners. A sophisticated filtering system further enhances the user experience by streamlining the search for specific information.

Introducing the Arkham Intel Exchange

The Arkham Intel Exchange introduces an innovative aspect to crypto analytics and Arkham's suite of products. This platform facilitates the buying and selling of crypto intelligence, empowering buyers to issue bounties for sought-after information and enabling sellers, including crypto investigators, to auction their findings. The exchange is fueled by Arkham's proprietary token, ARKM, which is used as currency for transactions involving entity identification, hacker tracking, and access to specialized data compilations.

Recovery Efforts for Alameda Research

According to a report by Bitcoin Magazine, Arkham Intelligence was instrumental in identifying that liquidators tasked with salvaging assets from the defunct hedge fund Alameda Research had secured. This discovery was made possible through the tracing of BTC transfers to various wallets from exchanges and cold storage up until March 2023.

Tracking the Euler Hacker

In a case reported by Coin Desk in April 2023, Arkham's analytical prowess enabled the tracking of the gradual restitution of approximately $200 million stolen by a hacker from the lending platform Euler Finance. The stolen assets, comprising a mix of dai (DAI), wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), staked ether (sETH), and USD coin (USDC), were methodically returned as part of negotiations between Euler and the perpetrator, showcasing Arkham's capacity to monitor complex asset recovery operations.

Criticism of Arkham Data Practices

Arkham's innovative technology has sparked debates and concerns within the cryptocurrency community, particularly around the potential for its misuse. The core of these apprehensions lies in the fear of initiating smear campaigns or the unwarranted exposure (doxing) of individuals through the use of Arkham’s intelligence trading platform.

Further unease arises from the platform's referral system, where users share unique URLs to invite others. Despite appearing as a benign string of characters, these URLs can be decrypted to reveal a user’s email address, posing a significant privacy risk.

This concern was heightened following the launch of a feature by Arkham aimed at unveiling the identities behind digital wallets, which was met with backlash from those valuing privacy within the crypto community. The inadvertent exposure of email addresses through the referral URLs—unbeknownst to the wallet owners—only added to the controversy, leaving the exact number of compromised users uncertain. Anyone sharing a referral link might have unknowingly exposed their email address.

Arkham’s CEO, Miguel Morel, acknowledged this oversight during the platform's beta phase, intended to incentivize user referrals. A subsequent update to the code was made to encrypt email addresses securely, thwarting any attempts at decryption. This move underscores Arkham’s commitment to outing malicious entities in the cryptocurrency ecosystem while safeguarding user privacy.

In a notable incident reported in April 2023, Arkham faced backlash after a mistakenly issued alert led to a significant drop in Bitcoin’s price, shedding light on the platform's influence on market dynamics. The company clarified on X (formerly Twitter) that the alert was erroneously reported, showcasing the delicate balance between providing critical information and ensuring accuracy.

This scenario illustrates the ongoing tension between the need for transparency to protect and inform users and the imperative to preserve their anonymity and privacy. The challenge for Arkham Intelligence and similar entities lies in navigating this dichotomy, striving to maintain an equilibrium where user protection does not compromise privacy.

Please note that Plisio also offers you:

Create Crypto Invoices in 2 Clicks and Accept Crypto Donations

12 integrations

6 libraries for the most popular programming languages

19 cryptocurrencies and 12 blockchains