Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain sleuthing company in the vein of Chainalysis and others, recently announced the release of a platform to deanonymize and trade information pertaining to blockchain users, as well as the release of a new ARKM token to go with it.
Snitching as a Service
Touted as “the world’s first on-chain intelligence exchange,” Arkham Intelligence will allow users of the service to post bounties for any information on blockchain users.
“Our vision for the Intel Exchange is a decentralized intel-to-earn economy powered by smart contracts, in which any sleuth can earn based on their skills & experience. As such, all transactions on the Arkham Marketplace will take place through smart contracts audited by our partner Quantstamp.”
There are no limitations on what kind of information can be requested, although the company did promise to ban spammers and those submitting low-quality information.
Once the information requested has been uncovered, the person who posted the bounty will have a 90-day exclusivity period to use the newly gleaned information as they see fit. After this period, the info will become a part of Arkham’s public database.
Naturally, the announcement of a tool that could strip away one of the main things that attract some users to blockchain technology left the crypto community divided, with some accusing Arkham of trying to become the arbiter of good and evil.
More cynical users also chimed in, reminding others that this platform could very easily be employed to uncover the identities of whales, who could be targeted online or in real life – much like what happened following the Ledger Wallet leak.
Announcing The World’s First On-Chain Intelligence Exchange
Buy and sell information on the owner of any blockchain wallet address—anonymously, via smart contract. pic.twitter.com/4xr7dLvOjp
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 10, 2023
Meanwhile, Arkham seems to have gotten a head start in the game of deanonymizing the blockchain – starting with its own fans.
Doxxing Their Own Userbase
Shortly after announcing the launch of its new service, Arkham came under fire for doxing its own users via the referral links for the platform’s waiting list.
The referral, which was thought to contain a random string of numbers, actually encoded the email address of the user using BASE64 – an encryption algorithm that is trivially easy to decode.
ABSOLUTE LMAO. ALL #ARKHAM REFERRAL LINKS SHARED ON TWITTER IS DOXXING EVERYONE BECAUSE THE EMAIL IS IN THE REFERRAL URL. @inversebrah -> [email protected] pic.twitter.com/m38VnNMS8k
— m4gicpotato ⟁ (@m4gicpotato) July 10, 2023
Some users even accused Arkham of doing it on purpose, as a company centered around sleuthing would be unlikely to commit such a huge mistake accidentally.
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