Crypto sleuths have a new way to get paid: Arkham’s on-chain intelligence platform

Arkham Intelligence is debuting a marketplace where crypto sleuths can get paid for providing on-chain analysis to traders, researchers and even journalists.

The Arkham Intel Exchange, which is being called an “on-chain intelligence marketplace,” is being paired with a token launch from Arkham. 

The platform will work on a bounty system — anyone can post a bounty, and whoever fulfills it first will get paid in Arkham’s upcoming native coin, ARKM.

ARKM will go live on Binance Launchpad Tuesday, and people will be able to buy the token from July 11 to July 17. According to Binance, 5% of ARKM’s supply will be up for grabs, and each user can only pick up a maximum of $15,000 worth of tokens, about 300,000 ARKM.

To have access to the bounty, users will have to stake their funds “to request information on crypto addresses or entities,” according to a blog post from Arkham. After the initial bounty is set, more people can stake ARKM, thereby increasing the reward for potential bounty hunters, according to the product’s white paper.  

Sellers can also auction off their intelligence that they’ve gained via their own investigations. 

Arkham envisions typical bounties on the platform to include tasks such as finding a hedge fund’s wallet address, revealing the real identity of someone impersonating a notable individual, and victims of scams combining their funds to expose the perpetrator.

The Arkham Foundation will review and authenticate all submitted bounties and information for auction, and suspected spam submissions will be deleted. Additionally, bounties have a time limit. 

“Any intel bought or sold on the Intel Exchange is subject to an exclusive 90-day access period, during which only the users who funded the bounties are given access to the intelligence submissions,” Arkham wrote in the blog post.

It continued, “After the 90 days are up, the information is added to the Arkham platform, and granted to Arkham’s wider community.”

Arkham explained on Twitter that the 90-day window gives the original purchaser, the person who funded the bounty, enough time to capitalize on the information acquired. 

Arkham will make money on this new platform by collecting a 2.5% fee on submitted bounties and auction payouts, and a 5% fee on bounty payouts and successful auction bids.

The narrative on Twitter was split between people who were excited about the new offering from Arkham and people who were framing it as a way to snitch on others. 

One user explained that his years of work labeling addresses might finally have some monetary value.

Another user said this platform gives people “on-chain doxxing incentives” and urged people to remain anonymous. Others were dissatisfied with the perceived lack of decentralization associated with the Arkham Intel Exchange.

The intel platform is set to go live on Tuesday, July 18 following the conclusion of the initial sale of the ARKM token.

Previous efforts to launch tokens for data companies in the crypto space have not always panned out, as demonstrated by the performance of SAN, CND, and LUNR, sourced from CoinMarketCap below.

Updated July 10, 2023 at 10:45am ET: Included further context for data-company tokens.

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