Scanning and analyzing a blockchain can be challenging, particularly when sorting through tens of thousands of blockchain addresses and millions of transactions. It's tedious and time-consuming and the story being told is often elusive. The Austin-based startup Blocktrace hopes that artificial intelligence can make the blockchain analysis process faster, and uncovering trends and anomolies easier.
Launched in 2018 by software engineer Shaun MaGruder, whose background includes work as the head of training at blockchain forensics firm, Chainalysis, Blocktrace is an AI-fortified blockchain forensic and analytical service provider. Using a chatbot they named Robby the Robot—after the iconic character from the sci-fi film "Forbidden Planet"—Blocktrace developed their AI to interact with data on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Blocktrace CEO MaGruder told Decrypt in an interview that the company decided to start the Robby project with Bitcoin because of its large sample size and history.
"Bitcoin is a great project to start with and will likely always be around, just like Ethereum," MaGruder said. "It's considered the OG because it was the first and has a large pool of user base addresses with a lot of activity."
According to MaGruder, a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain data is stored in Blocktrace's database—already a significant technical feat. Enhanced with an AI layer, their application allows users to ask natural language questions like a virtual assistant.
A natural language model is a type of artificial intelligence designed to understand and process human language, similar to how humans do.
"Users can quickly ask for specific information, such as transactions between dates and amounts," MaGruder said. "This saves time compared to the manual process, which could take one to two hours using a blockchain explorer."
MaGruder explains that Blocktrace aims to enable investigators and users to use the technology developed by OpenAI to quickly find Bitcoin addresses and identify transactions that occurred on the network with greater accuracy and detail.