Arkham is facing significant criticism regarding the language used in its announcement about its platform's capabilities for tracking transactions on the Zcash privacy network. The platform's wording suggested it could track shielded transactions on Zcash, a claim that many users and reputable figures dispute.
This misrepresentation has sparked backlash from industry observers and stakeholders, who have labeled it as deliberate clickbait. Mert Mumtaz of Helius Labs suggested that such a tactic is even more detrimental.
Arkham's Zcash Dashboard Capabilities
Arkham's announcement on X stated that it has labeled over half of the Zcash privacy chain's shielded and unshielded transactions, accounting for $420 billion in volume linked to known individuals and institutions.
The post encouraged users to "Track $ZEC transactions, entities, and balances on Arkham." However, this statement ignited a strong reaction from the broader crypto community, particularly from Zcash privacy advocates.
The announcement further elaborated, "Arkham has linked half of all Zcash activity to entities." Arkham reported labeling 53% of all Zcash transactions, with 48% of all inputs and outputs attributed to an entity, and 37% of all balances labeled, totaling $2.5 billion.
To illustrate its capabilities, Arkham highlighted that the U.S. Government holds $737,000 worth of ZEC, which was confiscated from AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes eight years ago.
Arkham stated, "That $737K has now doubled in value, held by the US Government for the past 8 years."
While the accuracy of Arkham's claims to the extent implied is subject to further scrutiny, the immediate backlash on X, predominantly from Zcash advocates, developers, and privacy maximalists, was primarily directed at Arkham's choice of wording.
Criticism from Mert Mumtaz and Others
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Labs, was among those who criticized Arkham's controversial post concerning Zcash and its shielded transactions.
Zcash's shielded transactions are renowned for obscuring the sender, receiver, and amount while still verifying transaction validity on the blockchain. This feature has been a key selling point for Zcash since its launch and has contributed to its growing popularity.
Mumtaz expressed his disapproval of Arkham's wording in a subsequent post, stating, "These guys did not label shielded txns (since impossible) but threw that in there for a quick click boost. 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."
He also shared his opinion directly on Arkham's post, calling the title "a scummy clickbait title." Mumtaz added, "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."
Other users in the comments echoed similar sentiments, pointing out that Arkham is capable of tracking "transparent addresses" on Zcash, which are public data. This is in contrast to truly shielded addresses, which Arkham reportedly categorizes as "Shielded" or "Unknown" without revealing their contents.
This distinction implies that no cryptographic breakthrough has occurred, and Zcash's shielded privacy remains intact as there is no underlying data to trace.