Amid a public-relations firestorm this week, Arkham CEO Miguel Morel defended the inherent lack of privacy in most blockchains during a Tuesday Twitter Spaces. The controversy was sparked by the crypto analytics platform’s new program, DOX-to-Earn, which incentivizes people to reveal the identities behind anonymous or pseudonymous blockchain addresses.
Publicly available blockchains are probably the worst possible way of keeping one’s private information private, Morel said. You are literally making transactions which you are broadcasting to a decentralized network of millions of people, all of whom can look on-chain in order to see which transactions are being broadcast.
Arkham markets the bounty program as a way for traders to gather financial data, and has also said that the bounties might be used to root out perpetrators behind crypto thefts and exploits. Privacy advocates have promoted projects like Zcash that let users make anonymous financial transactions.
Speed, ease of use, actually owning your own assets, being able to make cross-border payments instantly – these are all amazing reasons for using cryptocurrency, said Morel. Trying to be completely anonymous is not one, and this is something that, you know, many people do not understand.
When asked to expand on the rules Arkham would use to guide its moderation decisions, Morel said: We’re gonna explain everything and it’ll all be written out in the coming days. He added that audience members can read Arkham’s whitepaper for initial details, and said his ultimate plan would be to decentralize bounty moderation decisions to a wider community.