Merkle Science co-founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik
Singapore-based startup Merkle Science, which provides a predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform, has closed its US$5.75 million Series A funding round led by Darrow Holdings.
Other participating investors include Kraken Ventures, Bain-backed Uncorrelated Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Token Bay Capital, Kenetic, and Lunex Ventures.
Merkle Science will use the capital for product development to serve enterprise segments, such as law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. It will also continue evolving its behaviour-based Rule Engine, expanding its token coverage to over 500,000 tokens, and customising solutions for decentralised finance (DeFi) and NFT platforms.
The funding announcement comes in the wake of Merkle Science’s launch in the US market.
Merkle Science co-founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik, said: “Our vision is to build the infrastructure necessary to ensure the safe and healthy growth of the crypto industry, starting with understanding the risks associated with cryptocurrency transactions.”
Also Read: (Exclusive) Merkle Science raises US$804K in seed funding round led by LuneX, SGInnovate
“Globally, we have seen strong demand, especially from financial institutions and law enforcement agencies, as crypto-related illicit activity and regulations have taken centre stage. Merkle Science’s intelligence platform is highly customisable and built to evolve with crypto criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance for our users and ultimately allowing them to focus on their core competencies,” he explained.
Founded in 2018, Merkle Science helps crypto companies, financial institutions, and government entities detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies.
Unlike other blockchain monitoring and investigative tools in the market, Merkle’s platform takes a behaviour-based approach to transaction risk management, resulting in more proactive and effective crime monitoring and investigations. This approach enables its intelligence platform to evolve with crypto-related criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance and ultimately allowing businesses to focus on their core competencies.
Its Blockchain Monitoring tool goes beyond the blacklists, so compliance teams may detect illicit activity from their incoming and outgoing cryptocurrency transactions and meet their local KYC/AML compliance obligations.
The tool also helps regulators understand the risks across all types of crypto businesses, stay on top of emerging technologies, and keep pace with the industry’s increasingly complex illicit activities.
Dean Carlson, head of digital asset investments at Susquehanna and newly-appointed board member at Merkle Science, noted: “As the crypto industry continues to evolve, regulatory challenges are the biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption by financial institutions. The Merkle team has the right mix of regulatory and technology domain expertise to become the gold standard for cryptocurrency compliance and forensics.”
As a board member, Carlson will guide the executive team at a critical growth stage as crypto goes mainstream amid fast-evolving crypto regulations.
With clients across APAC, Europe, and North America, Merkle Science claims it has grown its revenue by over 900 per cent.
In May 2019, Merkle Science bagged seed funding led by Lunex and SGInnovate.
In the past six months, institutional interest for cryptocurrencies and compliance in the US has surged, which has prompted both the co-founders to move their base to New York as part of Merkle Science’s expansion plans.
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Image Credit: Merkle Science.
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