Investigating corruption and other financial crimes often requires authorities in different countries to piece together information held by different agencies and private companies. Recovering the proceeds depends on their ability to share, understand and act on that information.

When cryptoassets are involved, blockchain intelligence tools can help investigators trace funds and identify links to individuals or services. But agencies may use different tools, each with its own terminology, data formats and analytical methods. Comparing findings or passing an investigation to another authority can involve substantial additional work.

Shared standards would make this cooperation easier. Developing them requires technical expertise and sustained engagement among stakeholders with different responsibilities, interests and needs. Not an easy task, but essential if we are to keep up with the speed and global scale of financial crime involving cryptoassets.

A breakout session at the 10th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptoassets in Luxembourg examined progress towards these standards, building on a previous breakout at the 2025 conference in Vienna.

Breakout organisers Bernhard Haslhofer and Allison Owen of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna contributed to this Q&A on the discussion and next steps in the Open Blockchain Intelligence Standards initiative.

Why does standardisation need a collective effort?

Investigators need findings they can share across borders and use in court. Supervisors and cryptoasset service providers (CASPs) need information they can rely on for risk assessments and compliance decisions. Tool providers need to meet those requirements while protecting their methods and commercial interests.

Agreeing standards means working through these needs together. Technical experts can propose definitions and formats, but the people producing and using the information need to help shape them.

The Basel Institute on Governance brings these stakeholders together through the Global Conference, co-organised with Europol and UNODC. It provides a neutral platform to discuss problems openly and work on practical solutions. This reflects the approach behind anti-corruption Collective Action: bringing private-sector and other stakeholders together around a shared need, even where their interests differ.

All major tool providers were in the room and actively engaged, alongside public authorities and other specialists. There was clear interest in the work and plenty to discuss, though reaching agreement will require continued participation.

Isn’t variety in the blockchain analytics industry good for innovation and competition?

Yes – but there is a big “but”. Without shared standards, providers use different terms and definitions to describe similar information, and present it in different formats.

These differences impose a “translation tax”: the time and resources needed to compare outputs, explain terminology and reconcile findings across tools. This does not necessarily stop an investigation, but it can slow cooperation and create unnecessary work.

Standardisation does not mean giving up companies’ ability to innovate and compete or disclose their “secret sauce”. Common terminology and data formats would make their outputs easier to compare and review while allowing providers to retain their own methods.

Who needs blockchain intelligence standards?

Everyone who produces or uses blockchain intelligence, though for different reasons:

• Investigators: Common data formats and terminology would make it easier to share findings between tools, and to improve inter-agency and cross-border cooperation.
• Policymakers: Requirements to use blockchain analytics tools need clear definitions and meaningful criteria for assessing their quality and suitability. A topical example is a reference in the U.S. Clarity Act to “industry standard distributed ledger-analytics tools”, when no such industry standard currently exists.
• Expert witnesses, prosecutors and judges: Consistent terminology and clearer documentation would help all parties understand and scrutinise blockchain intelligence used in court, including the defence.
• Supervisors: Data from blockchain intelligence platforms can feed into a risk-based approach for supervision of CASPs. Standard data formats and terminology would ease automation and the efficiency of this process.
• CASPs: Exchanges and other cryptoasset service providers need to understand the basis for findings that inform compliance decisions. If their tool produces different findings from a supervisor’s tool, they need to know why.

What progress has there been?

At the breakout, providers described efforts to make the sources and reasoning behind their findings more transparent, improve attribution reports and preserve supporting material. Attribution is the link between a blockchain address and a real-world individual or entity, such as a sanctioned actor or an exchange.

There has also been progress in publishing definitions and documenting how addresses, wallets and their operators are described.

These contributions are useful, but individual providers’ approaches do not yet amount to shared standards.

What is the Open Blockchain Intelligence Standards initiative?

Bernhard Haslhofer presented the initiative, which includes draft terms and definitions for:

• Basic blockchain concepts: Objects such as addresses and transactions.
• Custody and control: Who holds the cryptographic keys used to control assets and on whose behalf.
• Wallet roles: How wallets are used, for example to receive deposits or hold funds.
• Computational methods: How addresses are grouped or “clustered” on the assumption that they are controlled by the same entity.
• Attribution: How an address or group of addresses is linked to a real-world entity, and what supports that link.

The aim is to develop standards that work for all stakeholders while respecting companies’ proprietary methods and intelligence.

What are the next steps?

The immediate priority is to refine the shared vocabulary through contributions from tool providers, public authorities, CASPs and technical experts.

The open process, which is planned to continue over the next months with both live meetings and discussions on GitHub, will allow contributors to discuss drafts, challenge definitions and work towards agreement. Further work will be needed to test and implement the standards.

This work to develop open standards and interoperability dovetails with an initiative of the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime and its Digital Asset Task Force. Presented by DATF Co-Chair Dimitrij Gede during the breakout, the Attribution Center concept aims to make attribution data available to public authorities such as financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies.

With access to more comprehensive information attributing crypto wallets to read-world entities, they would more easily be able to identify illicit activity and produce actionable intelligence from suspicious transaction reports.

Agreed standards and interoperability are essential to making that ambitious idea a reality. We hope that both projects succeed, and fast.

Learn more

• Interested in contributing to the standards project? Check out the OBIS web page and related GitHub forum.
• Learn more about the 10th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptoassets