KuCoin AMA With ARKHAM (ARKM) — A Deep Dive Into the First Intel-to-Earn Ecosystem, Transforming Crypto Transparency

Time: October 25, 2023, 12:00 PM - 1:01 PM (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with the Arham CEO and Co-Founder, Miguel Morel, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Official Website: https://www.arkhamintelligence.com

Follow Arham on Twitter and Telegram.

Q: Would you please introduce yourself to the KuCoin community and share a quick overview of Arkham?

Miguel: I’m Miguel, Arkham’s Founder and CEO. I’ve been working in crypto since 2017. I founded Arkham in 2020, which we conceived of as a single platform where you could look up any individual or company and be able to see their cryptocurrency activity across chains. Our goal has always been to serve a diverse set of end users and a wide range of use cases, from ecosystem development to trading diligence to personal investing. In doing so, we aim to help crypto fully realize the fundamental principle of transparency.

Q: Is it true that the name of ARKHAM is inspired by Batman?

Miguel: It is true. I was inspired to name the company Arkham after the name of the insane asylum in Batman. The Dark Knight (my favorite Batman movie) and Batman more broadly align very closely with my vision for the company.

We are working to provide the data and tools for everyone to be their own Batman - to have the things necessary to operate in the crypto markets safely and with the information they need to make good decisions. Just like Batman, we hope our users will use our data and tools to take matters into their own hands to expose/avoid bad actors in crypto markets and make good + informed decisions.

Q: What problems does Arkham solve that existing competitors haven't, and what is its competitive advantage?

Miguel: The dataset and tools we’ve built solve the problem of raw blockchain data being pseudonymous, hard to understand, and difficult to analyze. To make blockchain data accessible, readable, and usable, we specialize in tagging and clustering blockchain addresses into an aggregated entity, individual, and token profiles that can then be searched and assessed.

Unlike many blockchain intelligence platforms, we aren’t hyper-focused on serving regulators and governments and their compliance and risk-centered use cases. We are built, first and foremost, for crypto projects, traders, and investors.

Unlike those existing players that are based on large service contracts or consulting models, we offer our platform as open software. You can access our platform just by going here.

Among consumer-facing platforms, we are unique in structuring and presenting our data in an entity-centric orientation as opposed to an address-centric manner. That means you aren’t limited to searching and analyzing our data on a per-address basis but can also do so across multiple addresses owned by the same entity or individual at the same time.

You can learn more about our vision and products in our whitepaper and codex. Also, here's our guide.

Q: Are there any notable technologies the team is applying at Arkham?

Miguel: Yes, there certainly are! We built a technology that we call Ultra that algorithmically collects, aggregates, and labels on and off-chain data.

The first step in our process is collecting the raw blockchain data and combining it with other on-chain and off-chain publicly available data. We run our own infrastructure in order to do so.

We then aggregate, clean up, and store that data in our backend and use machine learning and other engineering/data science techniques to determine labels, make attributions, and cluster addresses that belong to the same entity in order to attach real-world names to the alpha-numeric addresses.

Lastly, we surface and curate that data on our front end, where users can search through it and apply our suite of tools on top in order to distill alpha. Rather than gatekeeping this valuable information for large institutions, we are opening it up to the crypto community as a whole.

Q: What is the Intel Exchange used for?

Miguel: The Arkham Intel Exchange is for trading on-chain analysis and labeling. This analysis is already widely shared and discussed in the crypto community. You can access it here.

The Intel Exchange is creating a liquid market for it so that on-chain researchers can more easily monetize their work and exchange information. An inability to monetize on-chain research conducted as a public good is a major obstacle to increased transparency, which the Intel Exchange is designed to overcome. The purpose of the on-chain research community is to better understand market activity for trading purposes and to identify scams. Most of this on-chain research is focused on big institutions like exchanges and trading firms.

The Intel Exchange is exclusively for intelligence regarding blockchain transaction analysis in the public interest. Bounty submissions can rely on publicly available information only. Individual attributions are allowed only when in the public interest. No physical addresses, phone numbers, or other sensitive personally identifiable information is allowed to be requested or submitted.

Only submissions that establish an attribution with a high level of confidence, with independently verifiable public information, will be accepted.

Q: What is your vision for the future of crypto and on-chain data in particular?

Miguel: Compared to traditional financial systems, blockchain-based technology enables a more complete and precise analysis of financial activity. In traditional finance, data is hidden in black boxes guarded by established players such as brokers, exchanges, regulators, and banks.

In crypto, raw transaction data is visible to everyone due to the public nature of blockchains, but in practice, it only becomes usable once processed, aggregated, and analyzed by data platforms. The greater power of crypto financial data compared to traditional data confers a significant advantage upon those who can use it, rendering crypto intelligence tools essential for serious market participants.

Their advent will transform the financial industry. This transformation, and the recognition of it, has only just begun. Crypto will reach mass global adoption because it is a more efficient, reliable, and robust financial system. Once you use crypto, there’s no going back.

Explaining to your bank on a wire form who you want to send your money to and why becomes intolerable after you’ve seamlessly made large transfers in a browser wallet. Any foundational technological shift encounters resistance and other difficulties but overcomes them through a process of creative destruction. It will be the same with crypto.

Q: Where can people find out more about Arkham and what you’ve built?

Miguel: The easiest place where we always first make announcements is our X (Twitter). We also publish lots of analysis there as well. For longer-form content, I'd encourage people to check out our website (in particular, the Research page). Lastly, we have a super vibrant community that hangs out on Discord and Telegram mostly.

And, of course, there's our YouTube channel, where we have posted talks I've given, as well as demos of the platform.

Q: How does Arkham balance the need for transparency and accountability with the need for privacy and security in the crypto space?

Miguel: We deanonymize the blockchain because we believe that transparency is foundational to realizing the original promise of blockchains (as outlined in the Bitcoin Whitepaper). We also believe it is crucial in order to drive widespread adoption and to allow for our industry to be self-regulating. The biggest thing holding our industry back is the scams, rug pulls, hacks, and other bad actors that are giving our industry a bad rep. They are preventing widespread adoption and encouraging heavy-handed regulation.

We need to bring these actors into the light and discourage them from even entering space and doing these things in the first place. We can best do that by demonstrating that with the transparency that deanonymized blockchains bring, they will easily be avoided and found out.

There will always be a place for opt-in privacy through specialized protocols and tools. Just like with the internet - where it isn't private by default and can be used privately with some extra effort and things like VPNs, special browsers, etc. I think privacy and transparency can exist side by side. It is ultimately a choice each market participant can make for themselves.

Q: Is your project a community only for English-speaking countries or for users not of other languages?

Miguel: Our project/community is definitely NOT just for English speakers. We have many community members and users from all over the world. To support them, we not only have dedicated community groups (which will be shared below), but we are in the process of translating our platform into different languages. So far, we have gone live with Chinese, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. And more are on the way!

Q: Marketing is a central element for every project so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieving the goals set. What is your strategy to attract new users and investors to your platform and keep them long-term?

Miguel: The most important thing for us that will continue to drive growth and adoption is paying close attention to the needs/desires of our users. It sounds obvious but isn't often followed. Since day one, we've consistently asked for input from our community for things like new feature suggestions. And we really do pay close attention to that feedback when deciding what to build next.

Beyond that, we are also very focused on expanding our reach to different parts of the world and tailoring our offerings accordingly (the platform translations being a perfect example). Asia is definitely a big focus for us, and I look forward to spending more and more time there.

Lastly, it's important that we identify and reward the community members who contribute the most. That's why we do things like our VIP affiliate program.

Q: Many projects have problems with UI / UX, and this one turns off new users. How do you plan to improve the interaction with new users and with users outside the crypto space?

Miguel: We definitely think a lot about how we can make our tools and data easier to understand for non-crypto natives. I'll admit that, at the moment, it definitely helps to understand the basics of blockchains when using our platform. Up to this point, we've been focused on building the most powerful dataset and tools with a lot of customization to serve a wide range of end users and use cases.

We have lots of retail investors using our platform, but we also have tons of really advanced algorithmic traders and everything in between. Over time, I definitely want to add more curated analysis where we are doing the work for our users rather than leaving it up to them to find alpha. So I'd say that will be one of the most important things to continuing to onboard new users, especially from outside of crypto.

We will definitely continue to emphasize learning/teaching about how to best make use of on-chain analysis both within and outside of our platform.

Q: What kind of role do you see ARKM playing in the broader crypto ecosystem, and how do you see it evolving over time?

Miguel: For me, the most impactful thing we've done is open up access to institutional grade tooling and on-chain data so that anyone around the world can make use of it. Before Arkham, this kind of data and tooling was only available for institutions, regulators, and governments or was priced at a point that made it unusable by retail.

I'm really proud of the fact that we have now leveled the playing field and given normal people the ability to use these tools and data to make better decisions when operating in crypto markets. I believe in a future where success in markets is dictated by what you do with information, not by whether you have access to it. We want to create a world in which crypto has reached global widespread adoption and has provided people access to financial products and markets that they never did before with TradFi.

Access that truly helps them better themselves and improve their lives. We envision a world in which the crypto industry is largely self-regulating, and its participants can make decisions confidently because bad actors like scams are quickly exposed and easily avoided. We are building the tools we think are critical to enabling that vision.

🎁 Participate in the ARKM AMA quiz now for a chance to an equal share of a 1,500 ARKM prize pool!

The form will remain open for five days from publishing this AMA recap.

KuCoin and Kava have prepared a total of 5,000 ARKM to give away to AMA participants.

1. Pre-AMA activity: 2,237.5 ARKM

2. Free-ask section: 137.50 ARKM

3. Flash mini-game: 1,125 ARKM

4. Post-AMA quiz: 1,500 ARKM

. . .

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