The Future of Discovery: Programmatic Access to On-Chain Evidence

Investigators are trapped in closed systems like Chainalysis or TRM Labs, unable to build custom workflows. This creates vendor lock-in and stifles innovation.

• Data Portability: Evidence trapped in dashboards, not databases.
• Customization Gap: One-size-fits-all tools miss protocol-specific attack vectors.
• Cost Barrier: Enterprise pricing excludes independent researchers and smaller protocols.

Projects like The Graph and Goldsky are commoditizing raw data access. Forensic tools can now be built as composable applications on indexed streams.

• Composability: Mix transaction logs with NFT metadata and DeFi event data.
• Real-Time Alerts: Program triggers for suspicious patterns (e.g., Tornado Cash interactions).
• Reproducible Analysis: Queries and heuristics become shareable, verifiable code.

Current entity clustering (e.g., labeling an address as 'Binance 8') is brittle and often wrong. Mixers, bridges, and privacy pools intentionally break these models.

• False Positives: Legitimate users get flagged, creating noise.
• Evolving Tactics: Adversaries constantly adapt to static clustering rules.
• Privacy Erosion: Overly broad surveillance harms legitimate anonymity.

Protocols like Aztec and Nocturne enable users to prove compliance without revealing full transaction graphs. This is the future of regulated DeFi.

• Privacy-Preserving: Prove funds are clean without exposing source or destination.
• Programmable Policy: Smart contracts can verify ZK proofs for access (e.g., to a lending pool).
• Auditability: Cryptographic assurance replaces trust in centralized screeners.

Investigating a hack across Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Solana requires manually correlating data across incompatible explorers and RPC endpoints. The bridge is the new getaway car.

• Fragmented Trails: Evidence scattered across 10+ chain ecosystems.
• Time Lag: By the time you trace one hop, funds have moved twice more.
• Standardization Gap: No universal transaction ID or event schema.

Frameworks like Hyperliquid's L1 and intent-based architectures (UniswapX, CowSwap) create canonical logs. Tools must trace user intent across domains, not just asset movements.

• Unified Ledger View: Map an asset's lifecycle across all layers and rollups.
• Intent-Centric Analysis: Follow the signed order, not the temporary custody.
• Proactive Defense: Model attack paths before they're executed using simulation (Gauntlet, Chaos Labs).

Protocols like EigenLayer and LayerZero must manually filter millions of wallets for sybils, a slow and error-prone process.

• Solution: On-chain attestations from EigenDA or Hyperlane provide cryptographic proof of legitimate activity.
• Result: Sybil detection shifts from pattern analysis to proof verification, enabling automated eligibility checks and reducing manual review by >90%.

Lending protocols like Aave and Compound rely on over-collateralization because they lack on-chain credit history.

• Mechanism: Oracles like Goldfinch or Cred Protocol aggregate repayment proofs across DeFi into a portable score.
• Impact: Enables under-collateralized loans based on verifiable on-chain history, unlocking $100B+ in latent capital efficiency.

Stablecoins and cross-chain bridges require continuous, trust-minimized verification of off-chain reserves.

• Process: Chainlink oracles provide cryptographically signed attestations of real-world asset holdings directly on-chain.
• Evidence: Protocols like MakerDAO and Lido use these proofs to automate collateral health checks, preventing Terra-Luna style collapses by enabling real-time insolvency detection.

Architectures like UniswapX and CowSwap rely on solvers to fulfill user intents, creating a new verification challenge.

• Requirement: Solvers must provide cryptographic proof of optimal execution (e.g., via zk-proofs or attestations).
• Future: This on-chain evidence layer allows users to programmatically claim refunds for bad fills, turning MEV extraction into a verifiably punishable offense.

Marketplaces like Blur bypass creator royalties, relying on social consensus that is easily gamed.

• Solution: Programmable enforcement via smart contracts that check for a valid royalty attestation (e.g., an EAS stamp) before settlement.
• Evidence: Platforms like Manifold use this to make royalty payment a verifiable on-chain condition, not an optional policy.

DAO voting is plagued by low participation and manipulation via airdrop farming.

• Mechanism: Integrate proof-of-personhood (World ID) and proof-of-contribution (SourceCred) as gatekeeping attestations.
• Outcome: Voting power becomes a function of verifiable reputation, automating the exclusion of sybils and increasing proposal quality by filtering noise.

Traditional discovery relies on centralized entities like Coinbase or Tether to freeze and produce records, creating jurisdictional bottlenecks and single points of failure. This process is slow, often taking weeks or months, and can be evaded by moving assets to non-custodial wallets or alternative chains like Solana or Arbitrum.

• Key Benefit 1: Programmatic access bypasses corporate gatekeepers.
• Key Benefit 2: Provides a real-time, immutable audit trail resistant to tampering.

Tools like The Graph, Dune Analytics, and TRM Labs enable direct, SQL-like queries against the entire blockchain state. This transforms evidence gathering from a manual request into a repeatable, automated investigation. You can trace fund flows across Uniswap, Tornado Cash, and layerzero bridges in a single dashboard.

• Key Benefit 1: Enables complex, multi-chain transaction reconstruction.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates defensible, code-defined audit processes.

On-chain logic is the ultimate source of truth. Programmatic access allows you to verify contract state (e.g., ERC-20 balances, NFT ownership, DAO votes) at any historical block. This is critical for disputes involving DeFi protocols like Aave or Compound, where liability hinges on precise, timestamped contract interactions.

• Key Benefit 1: Eliminates 'he said, she said' with cryptographic proof.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables proactive monitoring for regulatory compliance and fraud.

Reliable infrastructure is non-negotiable. Using enterprise RPC providers like Alchemy or Infura ensures high-availability data access. However, raw data is useless without ABI decoders to translate hex into human-readable events. The next frontier is zero-knowledge proofs for proving claims (e.g., solvency, compliance) without exposing private transaction details.

• Key Benefit 1: >99.9% uptime for mission-critical evidence collection.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables privacy-preserving verification for sensitive cases.