Chainalysis

Overview

Chainalysis Address Screening is a purpose-built compliance and risk product designed to help organizations identify and manage threats arising from blockchain addresses and liquidity pools. It offers a blend of real-time screening, continuous monitoring, and granular risk insights so teams can detect illicit activity early, automate enforcement policies, and protect legitimate users. The product is accessible via an intuitive UI for manual review and via high-reliability APIs for programmatic, low-latency integration into production systems.

Core capabilities

1. Real-time screening and blocking: Instantly evaluate wallet addresses or liquidity pools to determine whether they are associated with sanctioned entities, scams, darknet markets, or other illicit activity. Screening can be applied programmatically via API or manually through the UI.

2. Customizable risk scoring: Configure severity categories, exposure thresholds, and scoring rules to align with your internal compliance posture. Address Screening provides severity risk scores that reflect both direct and indirect exposure, enabling teams to prioritize remediation and escalations.

3. Continuous monitoring and alerts: Maintain historical records of screenings and receive automated alerts whenever an entity’s risk profile changes. Continuous monitoring eliminates repeated manual rescreening and ensures teams remain informed of new developments.

4. Counterparty and exposure analysis: Gain visibility into counterparties, fund flows, and exposure patterns across wallets and liquidity pools. This includes both direct transfers and mediated relationships, letting investigators and compliance staff uncover proximate risk pathways.

5. High-reliability API and integration: Deploy Address Screening as a standalone UI for analysts or embed it into onboarding, transaction monitoring, and enforcement workflows using robust, low-latency APIs that support bulk operations and automated decisioning.

Why organizations choose Address Screening

• Data quality and accuracy: Chainalysis relies on extensive clustering heuristics and large-scale intelligence ingestion to deliver high-precision signals. The platform emphasizes data verification and low tolerance for error, which helps reduce false positives and improve customer experience.

• Operational flexibility: Whether you prefer an analyst-facing UI or deep API integration, Address Screening supports both modes. Its bulk management and alerting tools make it easy to apply consistent policies across high-volume environments.

• Regulatory alignment: The product is designed to help firms meet compliance obligations by identifying sanctioned actors and other illicit activity, and it is used by regulators and financial institutions worldwide.

• DeFi and liquidity pool awareness: In addition to individual wallets, Address Screening assesses risk across liquidity pools, tracking flows, exposures, and unusual patterns that can signal systemic or concentrated risk.

Typical use cases

1. Onboarding and KYC enhancement: Screen new wallet addresses during account opening to block high-risk actors before they transact.
2. Transaction monitoring augmentation: Feed screening results into transaction surveillance systems to improve detection coverage and prioritize alerts.
3. Investigations and due diligence: Use counterparty analysis and time-based risk scoring to trace funds, evaluate exposures, and support escalation to deeper Chainalysis tools when necessary.
4. DeFi risk management: Evaluate liquidity pool composition and movements to spot potential financial crime or vulnerability to exploitation.

Implementation and best practices

• Start by mapping your regulatory needs and defining risk thresholds that reflect acceptable exposure levels.
• Pilot the API integration for critical flows (e.g., onboarding, withdrawal checks) while using the UI for analyst-driven investigations.
• Leverage continuous monitoring to reduce manual rescreens and maintain a historical audit trail of risk changes.
• Combine Address Screening insights with broader telemetry (transaction patterns, user behavior) to minimize false positives and protect legitimate users.

Recommendation

Chainalysis Address Screening is well-suited for exchanges, custodians, financial institutions, and compliance teams that need timely, accurate wallet risk intelligence and flexible integration options. Its combination of high-quality data, customizable scoring, and continuous monitoring enables organizations to enforce policies confidently while minimizing disruption to genuine customers. Request a demo to evaluate how it fits your operational and regulatory requirements.