How to use Arkham Intelligence
Follow the money on-chain: searching entities and wallets, using the Visualizer, setting alerts, and the limits and ethics of blockchain sleuthing.
What is Arkham?
Most public blockchains are transparent: anyone can see every transaction. But addresses are just long strings of letters and numbers, so on their own they do not tell you who is behind them. Arkham Intelligence is a blockchain analytics platform that attaches names and labels to addresses, grouping them into entities such as exchanges, funds, companies, governments and well-known individuals.
Arkham describes itself as a multi-chain block explorer plus a suite of analysis tools. It covers the leading blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Arkham also runs its own crypto exchange and has a token (ARKM), so bear in mind that it is a commercial company with its own interests.
Searching for entities and addresses
The search bar is the starting point. You can search by:
- entity name (for example, an exchange or an ETF issuer)
- label
- wallet address
- X (Twitter) handle
- ENS name (Ethereum Name Service, such as name.eth)
- transaction ID
An entity or address page typically shows:
- Portfolio: the assets held, with live balances on supported chains.
- Balance history: how the holdings have changed over time, useful for watching things like ETF holdings or exchange reserves.
- Transfers: a filterable history of transactions (by value, sender, recipient, inflow or outflow).
- Counterparties: who this entity transacts with most, by volume.
Token pages show price history, supply information and top holders, which can reveal whether a small number of wallets controls most of a token.
The Visualizer
The Visualizer draws a network map of transactions between addresses and entities. Use it to see how funds move between wallets.
- Add addresses or entities using the search bar.
- In Arkham's colour scheme, green lines are inflows, red lines are outflows, and white lines are transactions between the entities you selected.
- Drag nodes around, and expand an entity into its individual addresses.
- Filter by token, value or time to cut out noise. By default it shows the most recent transactions.
There is also a Tracer for following the flow of funds through many wallets step by step, which is handy for following the proceeds of a hack.
Alerts
Alerts notify you when on-chain activity matches conditions you set, for example:
- a particular entity sends or receives funds
- a specific token moves
- transfers above a set US dollar value
- activity on a specific chain
Alerts can be delivered by email, Telegram, Slack or webhook. You need an account to set them up. Popular uses include watching large deposits of a token to exchanges (which can precede selling), long-dormant wallets waking up, and large stablecoin mints.
Other features
Arkham also offers custom Dashboards, AI-generated Insights on notable on-chain events, Market Data such as funding rates and liquidations, a developer API, and a mobile app. Its Intel Exchange is a marketplace where people can post bounties for, or sell, on-chain intelligence, paid in ARKM.
Caveats and privacy
- Labels can be wrong or out of date. Attribution is often inferred, not confirmed. Treat a label as a strong clue, not proof.
- Movement is not intent. A large transfer to an exchange might be a sale, but it could equally be internal housekeeping, collateral or custody changes.
- Exchanges' wallets mix many customers' funds, so you usually cannot see what an individual customer is doing.
- Privacy concerns. De-anonymising wallets helps catch hackers and fraudsters, but it also means ordinary people's holdings can be exposed once an address is linked to them. Arkham's paid-for intelligence marketplace has been criticised by privacy advocates for this reason.
- Protect yourself. Anything you do on a public blockchain may be traceable for ever. Be careful about publicly linking your name, social media accounts or ENS name to a wallet that holds significant funds, as this can make you a target for scams or worse.
- Do not copy-trade blindly. Seeing what a "whale" bought tells you nothing about their reasons, their timeframe, or whether they are hedged elsewhere.
This guide is for education only and is not financial advice.