Advanced surveillance and the intelligence economy

AI defensive escalation

Chainalysis launched blockchain intelligence agents on March 31 to combat automated fraud networks. These tools compress detection times for tasks that previously required specialist investigators. This defensive push follows a year where total illicit crypto volume hit $154 billion, which is a 162% increase from the previous year. North Korean hackers stole over $2 billion in 2025 alone. Russia processed $93.3 billion through its A7A5 ruble-backed stablecoin in under a year to evade sanctions. While Chainalysis scales its agentic defenses, Elliptic and TRM Labs also introduce machine learning systems designed to simplify investigations and detect illicit patterns across various major blockchains and complex ecosystems.

Organizations entering the industry in 2026 increasingly use alert configurations that would have ranked in the top 10% of strictness in 2020. Roughly 47% of these firms operate under these heightened standards. This shift follows the fact that North Korean-affiliated actors caused approximately $2 billion in crypto losses in 2025. Even as the market lost $2.1 trillion in capitalization, global crypto economic activity fell only 1.6% during the 12 months ended June 30, 2026. The value moving into centralized crypto services declined 4.3% to $8.9 trillion during that period, while the value of cross-border stablecoin transfers grew 77.5% to $220.3 billion. Brazil ranks first in the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index with an economy size of $252.5 billion, while the United States and Nigeria take second and third place.

Intelligence marketplaces and labeling

Nansen provides real-time wallet activity tracking and maintains a database of 500 million labeled addresses. Its smart money labels identify wallets with profitable histories, but these signals often become noisy or crowded once many traders follow the same movements. Arkham uses a different approach through its Intel Exchange, which is a marketplace where users post bounties to de-anonymize specific addresses. This exchange connects researchers who want to monetize their skills with buyers who need detailed analysis. Bounties remain subject to a slashing penalty if users submit spam or poor quality responses.

Nansen’s Solana tracker remains free for all users, covering holdings and trade history. Nansen’s Pro plan costs $69 per month, while free users pay 0.25% in trading fees compared to 0.10% for Pro users. Arkham bounties use ARKM to fund requests for information. You should check the real-time status of these feeds if your strategy relies on immediate execution.

Data infrastructure and API access

Dune relies on community-built SQL queries to provide data across Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana. The Dune Index, launched in November 2024, weights transaction fees at 45% and USD transfer volume at 45%. It also assigns a 10% weight to transaction count. The system counts only transactions involving at least $1. Arkham provides an entity intelligence API for programmatic access to its dataset. This API allows users to resolve addresses to entities and fetch holdings or transfers. Arkham’s exchange API covers market data like order books and trades.

Dune’s Pro subscription costs $390 per month. This allows users to keep dashboards and queries private. The Dune Index is based on a 2018 baseline. Does the proliferation of community-driven data models eventually replace centralized intelligence providers?