Arkham CEO rebuts claims of ‘snitch-to-earn’ program, says it’s to find bad actors

The chief of the startup blockchain intelligence platform Arkham has refuted claims by the crypto community that its new “Intel Exchange” is a “snitch-to-earn” or “dox-to-earn” system.

On a July 11 Twitter Space, Arkham CEO Miguel Morel discussed the public relations debacle that has unfolded this week over its marketplace.

Arkham’s Intel Exchange aimed to “deanonymize the blockchain” by rewarding users with a new token, ARKM, for revealing the identities behind otherwise anonymous blockchain addresses. It was launched on Binance Launchpad as a token sale this week.

The platform rapidly generated a lot of criticism on Crypto Twitter and was dubbed a “snitch-to-earn” system.

Morel disagreed with these claims and justified the platform saying it was designed to uncover scammers and hackers behind crypto exploits.

“Publicly available blockchains are probably the worst possible way of keeping one’s private information private,” he said before adding that Arkham would retain control of the data:

“It’s not a completely free market. So it’s not like anybody can just post any piece of information and then it can go online.”

“There are a bunch of restrictions and guidelines, all of which we will be rolling out,” he added.

I’ll be joining the @MarioNawfal CryptoTownHall at 14:45 UTC to have an open discussion about Arkham and our new Intel-to-Earn ecosystem.

See you there!https://t.co/PEfHI8aLBw

— Miguel Morel | Arkham (@RealMiguelMorel) July 11, 2023

Morel stated that the primary focus of its info exchange is uncovering trading firms, market makers, exchanges and very large institutions.

He added these large hedge funds and trading entities are “making money off of information about who’s buying and selling large positions of a particular token.”

Related: Crypto hacks and exploits snatch over $300M in Q2 2023

Another participant in the Twitter Space pointed out that Arkham has a responsibility to prevent abuse and may facilitate false accusations by so-called “crypto detectives,” however Morel maintained it will be properly governed.

“Thankfully, it’ll actually be more vetted and more regulated than something like Twitter or Facebook because every bounty needs to be approved.”

This raised even more concerns from TV host Ran Neuner who said, “my issue is not with the system. My issue is with your company managing the data.”

Arkham came under fire this week for leaking user emails via its weblink referrals program which includes an easily decipherable string of characters in referral links that reveal the referring email address.

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