Announced this last Wednesday, The U.S. Department of Treasury has awarded two grants to blockchain tracking and monitoring firms, Chainalysis and Integra FEC. Both firms received $625,000 in grants in a bid to develop privacy-focused blockchain transactions such as Monero and Layer-2 protocols.
In early September, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) called out firms and companies building blockchain tracking and monitoring tools to submit proposals on cracking privacy blockchains – especially Monero (XMR). The taxation authority incentivized companies to apply with a $625,000 grant promised to the winning contracts.
In less than three weeks, the IRS has made its decision selecting blockchain analysis firm, Chainalysis, and data forensics analysis firm, Integra FEC. Both the companies will receive a total of $1.25 million, shared equally, with authority looking for solutions to trace and monitor the privacy coin.
An IRS spokesperson confirmed a total of 22 companies in the blockchain space applied for the grants, with the two firms winning the bids. The winning teams will receive an initial payment of $500,000 to develop the privacy-based monitoring and tracking tool, and the rest of the amount will be released once the prototype of the tool is released and inspected.
The New York-headquartered blockchain analysis firm is a relatively known company in the crypto space. Chainalysis recently announced a partnership with the Wyoming state financial regulator to monitor public blockchain transactions and cryptocurrency mixers.
Integra FEC is a Texas-based data forensics firm that is relatively unknown in the crypto space despite partnering with the U.S. securities regulator, SEC. The firm built a consultation service, “Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services,” for the SEC.
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