Despite those concerns, some people are using it in service of a seemingly good goal: figuring out who’s behind rug pulls and other crypto exploits, said Arkham Intel Exchange, a new platform that incentivizes the unmasking of anonymous crypto users. On Arkham’s marketplace, which debuted on July 10, there are seven bounties, collectively worth about 168,000 ARKM (or $92,400), focused on identifying people who engaged in some kind of bad behavior.
The age-old conflict between idealism and pragmatism is at the heart of this story. Crypto was initially pitched to and well-received by people who cherish their privacy, but it was soon realized that it was possible to figure out the owner of superficially anonymous crypto wallets. This has led to services like Arkham, Chainalysis, and Nansen, which are used by law enforcement and Arkham users alike to try to chase down crooks and scammers by piercing the veil of blockchain anonymity.
One example of this is the meme-coin project called TOWELIE, which is accused of being a rug pull. Someone put a bounty on IDing its backers on the Arkham platform, worth 580 ARKM (which equals about $324 of Arkham’s token). TOWELIE keeps a low profile, with no official social media account on X (née Twitter) or Discord. This lack of communication conduits underscores why figuring out who’s behind a project can be important, particularly when something goes wrong.
Other bounties on Arkham include identifying the individual or entity responsible for exploiting about $415 million in cryptocurrency from FTX during its collapse as well as pinpointing who is behind the addresses that hacked crypto market maker Wintermute for about $160 million.