The ontology sets out how Chainalysis views the role of attribution to these groups, presenting a two-level structure; the first level “defines the structural graph”, while the second evaluates the confidence of the analysis in that graph.
“What does it mean that these addresses go together, right? It’s clearly because someone believes they are under the control of the same entity, right?” Illum said. “Maybe it’s an exchange, or maybe it’s a darknet market, or maybe it’s a mixer, or whatever. But what are the bases for establishing that these things really go together?”
Researchers likely don’t have private keys, which would be the easiest way to tell if a group of addresses is controlled by the same entity, so they would then have to look at the on-chain data.
Illum was also clear about the limitations of this type of analysis: While Chainalysis could perform transaction and cluster research, it cannot, on its own, identify the actual end user without additional information.
Chainalysis could trace funds to a crypto exchange, for example, or another entity that manages wallets on behalf of clients, but investigators may need to issue a subpoena to identify who the client is.
In other words, who controls a wallet or what entity is associated with the wallet are separate questions from the actual tracking aspect.
