As blockchain privacy demands grow, these two companies are monitoring Bitcoin public key transactions

Technology companies Skry and Terbium Labs have announced a partnership to improve cryptocurrency security and combat cybercrime by monitoring public key transactions on the dark web .

Skry and Terbium Labs analyze public chain activity

In April this year, the blockchain analysis company Coinalytics officially changed its name to Skry. Skry originally means "predicting the future with a crystal ball or other reflective surface."

On October 12, Skry announced a partnership with intelligence company Terbium Labs to fight cybercrime. Their services are aimed at financial institutions, Bitcoin companies, and law enforcement agencies investigating criminal activities.

At the same time, the two companies also published a research report on the dark web, arguing that Bitcoin and blockchain technology are constantly under attack by criminals. The report also mentioned common illegal activities, including extortion, exchange attacks and funding for drug trafficking.

Skry and Terbium wrote in the report:

The very nature of public blockchains, digital currencies, and decentralized currencies inadvertently opens the door to criminals.

In addition, some currency mixing applications, such as CoinJoin, Confidential Transactions and Mimblewimble, have improved privacy and anonymity to a certain extent. The report stated that although these applications guarantee user privacy, they "hinder investigators from tracking anonymous transactions of some companies."

Skry and Terbium believe that managing threat intelligence and risk solutions on the Internet and the dark web is necessary. Fabio Federici, CEO of Skry, said that Terbium Lab’s work will help them achieve this goal:

We are very excited to work with Terbium Lab to enrich the dark web data on our platform. The combination of Terbium Lab's high-end technology and Skry's blockchain intelligence platform can bring us unlimited inspiration and provide customers with more important information.

Case Studies

Skry listed detailed cases in the report to explain how they combat criminal activities. They will use Terbium's Matchlight system to monitor Bitcoin public keys.

Then, Matchlight will collect and record all public keys from Tor, darknet markets (DNM), forums, i2p and other platforms. Then, the relevant data will be taken over by Skry's analysis platform and officially enter the analysis stage.

The report tested a total of 3,697,408 URLs, mostly from sites such as Pastebin, dark web markets, and code repositories. Skry said these URLs can "provide important data intelligence for investigation procedures."

The analysis showed that about 11,000 different URLs and DNMs were bundled together, containing 22,000 public keys. Based on this data, Skry successfully identified 798 single Bitcoin public keys. The report stated that the largest dark web markets are Dream and AlphaBay, followed by a psychedelic drug forum Majestic Garden.

Monitoring Illegal Cryptocurrency Transactions

Skry and Terbium say the combination of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain gives their software a huge advantage. The partnership is more like developing a forensic tool to investigate suspicious activities. Their customers will benefit from the new dark web data intelligence system they provide.

Terbium's Matchlight system mainly detects illegal activities through data analysis. It can monitor Bitcoin public keys in real time and send warnings to Skry's analysis platform. Terbium Labs COO Tyler Carbone believes that this software can promote the development of digital currency and public chains.

"We are excited to be working with Skry to protect the growth of digital currencies and maintain the privacy of public ledgers. Terbium's unique approach to dark web monitoring will provide Skry's clients with the critical data they need for investigations, while also reducing risk and quickly combating fraud or illegal activity."

The blockchain surveillance industry is growing rapidly, and the companies involved believe that what they are doing is justified because Bitcoin is essentially a public ledger that can accept these surveillance tools.

However, the blockchain industry is full of privacy-enhancing solutions, which Skry and Terbium are very concerned about. At the Milan Scaling Bitcoin conference held in early October,可互换性（fungibility） became the focus of discussion, which is also one of the important reasons why privacy is valued.