The brand new 12 months seems to be off to a turbulent begin for Chainalysis. Along with Roman Sterlingov’s trial scheduled to start on February 12, which calls into query the reliability of the Chainasis Reactor in multi-million greenback cash laundering allegations, Chainasis is now being sued by the cryptocurrency mission YieldNodes.
In its 2023 Cryptocurrency Crime Report, Chainalysis claimed that YieldNodes, a Hong Kong-based mission that rents computing energy to take part in a masternode pool, is a rip-off. In its abstract graph of cryptocurrency rip-off exercise, Chaina Evaluation depicted YieldNodes because the second-largest cryptocurrency rip-off by income for 2022 with a complete of $341.6 million. Notably, Chainalogy’s chart didn’t detect FTX, one of many largest cryptocurrency scams thus far that embezzled $8 billion of buyer funds.
“They by no means tried to contact us earlier than publishing their report, and after we tried to contact them to debate their report, all they did was direct us to their gross sales representatives and try to promote us licenses to their software program,” YieldNodes wrote of their publication .
The Chainalysis designation had extreme penalties for YieldNodes’ enterprise, as members have been banned from depositing and withdrawing income from exchanges. The reputational harm continued as Chainalysis’ declare unfold via the media, resulting in the removing of YieldNodes’ merchandise from buying and selling platforms.
In a brief assertion, YieldNodes advised me that they solely found the Chainasis ranking after receiving transaction errors from members. YieldNodes is now accusing Chainalogy of placing “advertising and marketing earlier than reliability,” citing the admitted lack of scientific proof for its flagship product, citing the dearth of false constructive charges, false adverse charges, and margin of error charges.
In July, YieldNodes inspired tasks to affix a possible class motion lawsuit towards Chainalysis, citing the dimensions of the corporate and the prices related to difficult Chainalysis’ claims in court docket. Chainalysis, based in 2014, is a blockchain surveillance firm that gives its merchandise to exchanges, monetary establishments, and legislation enforcement companies, together with ICE, IRS, FBI, SEC, and DEA. Chainalysis has acquired greater than $3.3 million from InQTel, the CIA’s nonprofit enterprise capital arm, since 2020.