Arkham accused of misleading users over claims about tracking Zcash privacy activity

Arkham is under fire for the wording of its post announcing the capabilities of its platform to track transactions on the Zcash privacy network. The wording implied the analytics platform could do something many users and reputable voices don’t believe it can — track shielded transactions on Zcash. 

This has led to backlash from industry observers and stakeholders, calling the misrepresentation a deliberate clickbait, which, according to Helius Labs’ Mert Mumtaz, is somehow worse. 

Arkham is bullish on its Zcash dashboard

Arkham’s post on X claims it has labeled over half of the privacy chain Zcash’s shielded and unshielded transactions, which accounts for $420 billion of volume linked to known individuals and institutions.

“Track $ZEC transactions, entities, and balances on Arkham,” the post encouraged. However, what it did was stoke the flames of a rebuff from the general crypto community, and especially the Zcash privacy proponents. 

“Arkham has linked half of all Zcash activity to entities,” the thread continued. 

Arkham reports that it has labeled 53% of all Zcash transactions, with 48% of all inputs and outputs attributed to an entity, while 37% of all balances are labeled ($2.5 billion). 

To demonstrate the capability, Arkham revealed that the US Government is sitting on $737,000 worth of ZEC, which it confiscated from AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes 8 years ago.

“That $737K has now doubled in value, held by the US Government for the past 8 years,” Arkham wrote. 

Whether or not these things are true to the extent the post has implied is subject to future judgment. However, the backlash that erupted immediately on X, primarily from Zcash advocates, developers, and privacy maximalists, was due to Arkham’s wording. 

Mert Mumtaz and others line up to criticize Arkham 

Mert Mumtaz, Helius Labs’ CEO, was one of those who attacked Arkham over the polarizing post regarding Zcash and its shielded transactions. 

Zcash’s shielded transactions famously hide the sender, receiver, and amount while still verifying validity on the blockchain, a merit that has been Zcash’s selling point since its inception and that has made it very popular in recent times. 

Mert did not like Arkham’s wording. The Helius Labs CEO said as much in a post he shared after. “These guys did not label shielded txns (since impossible) but threw that in there for a quick click boost,” he wrote. “For a data org, that’s as scammy as it gets. Clicks over truth. Once you lose credibility, good luck getting it back. Not so surprising for a team w a shitcoin ig.”

Under the official Arkham post, he made sure to share his two cents as well, calling the post out for what he tagged “a scummy clickbait title.”

“You obviously have not been able to do jack all to shielded txns, but you include in there for a few clicks, you’ve now shown the world you’re a dishonest scam ofg, let’s see how that short-term game plays out.” 

Others in the comment section had the same sentiment, with many pointing out that what Arkham is actually able to track are the “transparent addresses” on Zcash, which fall under public data, unlike truly shielded addresses, which Arkham merely categorises as “Shielded” or “Unknown” without revealing contents. 

This would mean no cryptographic breakthrough happened, and shielded privacy on Zcash remains intact because there simply isn’t any data to trace.

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