News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Defiant, Arbitrum officially activated the ArbOS 61 Elara upgrade on August 20, which was approved for deployment via an ArbitrumDAO governance vote. The core features of this upgrade include: introducing an optional protocol-level transaction filtering mechanism for Dedicated Chains, allowing chain owners to independently select external compliance service providers such as TRM Labs and Chainalysis to configure restricted address rules; the filter is disabled by default and does not affect existing Arbitrum One users; adding Priority Fee support, also disabled by default, with its activation on Arbitrum One still requiring a separate DAO constitutional vote; introducing the BaseFeeManager contract, which authorizes Offchain Labs to adjust the L2 minimum Gas fee within a DAO-approved range of 0.01 to 0.10 gwei over a two-year authorization period; additionally, the maximum code size limit for Stylus contracts has been increased from 24 KB to 96 KB, though this does not apply to Solidity contracts.
Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis Government Solutions filed a bid protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on July 27, challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) award of an approximately $94.6 million blockchain forensics software and support services contract to competitor TRM Labs on a sole-source basis. The contract term is from July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027, for investigations related to the Homeland Security Special Operations Group.
blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis Government Solutions filed a bid protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on July 27, opposing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) decision to award a contract worth approximately $94.6 million to competitor TRM Labs on a sole-source basis. The contract, covering the period from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027, involves blockchain forensics software and support services for Homeland Security task forces investigating fraud, cybercrime, and sextortion cases. Chainalysis argues that ICE's decision was arbitrary and unreasonable. TRM Labs joined the case as an intervenor-defendant on July 28, defending the contract alongside the U.S. government. The court has allowed Chainalysis to temporarily seal its complaint, with oral arguments scheduled for September 2. ICE stated that after approximately six days of market research, it determined that none of the eight responding companies could meet the requirements. (Decrypt)
Odaily News, January 10 - A Bitcoin and Litecoin holder provided a 12-word recovery phrase to attackers impersonating Trezor support personnel, resulting in the theft of approximately $282 million in assets, including about $139 million in Bitcoin and $153 million in Litecoin. Blockchain forensics firm ZeroShadow stated that the incident stemmed from a social engineering attack, not a compromise of wallet software or private key infrastructure. The stolen funds were split via the THORChain cross-chain bridge within minutes and converted into Monero through instant exchange services. ZeroShadow's monitoring team flagged and froze approximately $700,000 in funds within 20 minutes. Under the BIP39 standard, a 12-word recovery phrase contains approximately 128 bits of entropy, while a 24-word phrase contains 256 bits of entropy. Chainalysis estimates that up to 23% of all mined Bitcoin is permanently inaccessible due to lost keys, involving millions of BTC, with causes including forgotten recovery phrases, damaged backups, and a lack of inheritance planning.
amid growing insider trading concerns surrounding prediction markets, Goldman Sachs has prohibited its employees from trading prediction market contracts related to the bank's own events, elections, financial markets, macroeconomic data, and geopolitics. Financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America are also formulating or updating relevant policies. Bank of America, in particular, has begun clarifying prohibited practices in prediction market trading to its employees.Previously, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice accused a Google employee of using non-public information to trade "Search of the Year" related contracts on Polymarket, profiting approximately $1.2 million. Legal experts note that the CFTC still lacks well-established case law in enforcing insider trading rules for prediction markets, and the wide variety of prediction market contracts further complicates regulatory oversight.Currently, Kalshi and Polymarket have respectively launched employment verification tools and collaborated with Chainalysis and Palantir to monitor suspicious trading activities. (CNBC)
According to Chainalysis, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated its sanctions list against ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan Branch) on July 1, adding 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses, of which 131 are on the TRON chain and 3 are Monero addresses. On-chain data shows that the aforementioned TRON wallets have cumulatively received over $1.4 million since 2023 and transferred out over $880,000, with some funds flowing to Syrian crypto exchangers. Currently, Tether has frozen the balances of all 131 TRON addresses. Additionally, on the same day, OFAC also sanctioned two Brazilian individuals and four companies related to the Latin American criminal organization "Primeiro Comando da Capital" (PCC), accusing them of using cryptocurrency to transfer over $30 million in illegal proceeds across borders from the United States to Brazil.
Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis has released a new methodological proposal aimed at establishing a unified on-chain fund tracking standard framework for law enforcement agencies and investigators to identify address clusters and determine their probable control relationships.The proposal defines the on-chain analysis structure in the form of an "ontology," centralizing the systematic decomposition of the currently industry-wide non-standardized concept of "cluster" (address clustering) into wallet segments and functional roles. It describes on-chain relationships through a two-tier structure: the first layer defines the transaction graph structure, and the second layer assesses the inferred confidence level.Chainalysis states that the framework aims to enhance the interpretability and legal applicability of on-chain forensic methods and has been validated through its practical experience in cases related to the U.S. Department of Justice, including analysis applied in the Bitcoin Fog mixing service case. The company's Chief Scientist, Jacob Illum, noted that the proposal's goal is to answer "on what evidentiary basis can these addresses be considered to belong to the same entity," but emphasized that on-chain analysis alone cannot directly identify end-user identities and must still be combined with legal investigative methods involving centralized entities such as exchanges.Chainalysis stated that the standard proposal is currently open for industry discussion, aiming to promote a more unified technical standard for on-chain analysis methods in the fields of law enforcement and compliance. (CoinDesk)
According to The Block, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis’ latest report states that as the gray-market peptide industry’s scale exceeds an annualized $100 million, leading suppliers are accelerating adoption of Bitcoin and stablecoins as primary settlement instruments. In Q1 2026, cryptocurrency inflows into this industry reached $32 million—a 159% quarter-on-quarter surge. Due to widespread bans imposed by traditional banks and credit card payment channels on prescription-grade compounds and unregulated substances, numerous Chinese chemical manufacturers have turned to cryptocurrencies for transactions, with high-value orders especially favoring stablecoins to hedge against price volatility risk.
Chainalysis has released a report stating that as demand for gray market peptide products (such as weight loss drugs like semaglutide) grows rapidly, related suppliers and buyers are increasingly using cryptocurrencies for transactions, with leading suppliers primarily relying on Bitcoin and stablecoins.The report shows that crypto funds flowing into this sector reached $32 million in the first quarter of 2026, a 159% increase from $12 million in the previous quarter, with the annualized scale already exceeding $100 million.Chainalysis points out that demand for peptide products is driven by trends in medical aesthetics, health and wellness, and the popularity of GLP-1 drugs. However, since these products often involve prescription-grade compounds or unregulated substances, traditional banks and credit card processors typically restrict their transactions, prompting the market to shift towards crypto payments.The agency also noted that some leading suppliers have adopted more professional on-chain fund management methods. Particularly among suppliers with average single deposits exceeding $1,000, the proportion of stablecoins has significantly increased, likely to mitigate the risk of large supply chain orders being affected by crypto market volatility.
Chainalysis has released a report indicating that overall compliance standards in the crypto industry are improving, but significant deficiencies remain in the monitoring of indirect fund flows.The report shows that among new institutions entering the crypto industry in 2026, approximately 47% adopted alert standards that would have ranked among the strictest top 10% in the industry five years ago. Chainalysis states that while industry standards for "direct monitoring" (funds coming directly from known illicit sources) have become largely unified, gaps remain in "indirect monitoring" (funds flowing through intermediate addresses).Data indicates that in 2020, only about 10% of institutions met top-tier industry compliance requirements. However, since 2023, this proportion has significantly increased, with newcomers generally adopting stricter monitoring standards. Nevertheless, for risk categories such as ransomware, scam shops, and darknet markets, industry thresholds for indirect monitoring are still commonly 10 to 20 times higher than those for direct monitoring. (Cointelegraph)
According to ZDNet Korea, South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) issued a tender notice on April 15 to introduce cryptocurrency transaction tracking software from firms including Chainalysis and TRM Labs. The system aims to monitor cryptocurrency transactions in real time, trace hidden assets of tax evasion suspects, and combat disguised inheritance, gifting, and offshore tax evasion involving digital assets. It can track approximately 70 million types of cryptocurrencies—including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and stablecoins—across 45 blockchain layers. The system also features “de-mixing” capabilities to identify mixing-service-based money laundering techniques and can perform partial identity verification for non-custodial wallets such as MetaMask and Phantom. This marks the NTS’s third deployment of such solutions since 2024; system construction is scheduled for completion in June, with official operation commencing in July.
According to Cointelegraph, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis released a report stating that stablecoin-adjusted transaction volume is projected to reach $719 trillion by 2035—marking a substantial increase from $28 trillion in 2025. If two major macro catalysts align, this figure could double further to $15 trillion, surpassing the current annual global cross-border payment volume of approximately $10 trillion. The two catalysts are: (1) the transfer of over $100 trillion in wealth from the Baby Boomer generation to younger, crypto-native generations; and (2) stablecoins fully replacing traditional payment rails as the default payment infrastructure. Rachael Lucas, an analyst at Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets, noted that strategic moves—including Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge and Mastercard’s partnership with BVNK—are concrete steps forward. Coupled with regulatory clarity provided by the GENIUS Act, institutional participation is expected to expand significantly.