Merkle Science, a predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform, today announced the close of its $5.75 million Series A funding round led by Darrow Holdings. Other investors in the round include Kraken Ventures, Bain-backed Uncorrelated Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Token Bay Capital, Kenetic, and Lunex Ventures.
“We’re thrilled to have the support of prominent investors who have great track records of investing in some of the most successful fintech and blockchain startups in the world,” said Merkle Science co-founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik. “It gives us great confidence that they are in line with our vision 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. Globally, we have seen strong demand — especially from financial institutions and law enforcement agencies — as crypto-related illicit activity and regulations have taken center stage. Merkle Science’s intelligence platform is highly customizable and built to evolve with crypto criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance for our users and ultimately allowing them to focus on their core competencies.”
Merkle Science said it takes a behavior-based approach to transaction risk management, resulting in more proactive and effective crime monitoring and investigations. That enables Merkle Science’s intelligence platform to evolve with crypto-related criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance and ultimately allowing businesses to focus on their core competencies.
In addition to the funding Merkle Science has added venture investment veteran and head of Digital Asset Investments at Susquehanna, Dean Carlson, to its board. The funding announcement comes shortly after Merkle Science’s recent launch into the U.S. market and the hire of Mary Beth Buchanan as president, Americas and global chief legal officer.
“As the crypto industry continues to evolve, regulatory challenges are the biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption by financial institutions,” Carlson said. “The Merkle team has the right mix of regulatory and technology domain expertise to become the gold standard for cryptocurrency compliance and forensics. It is my pleasure to join Merkle Science’s board and I look forward to working more intimately with the team as they build out crypto compliance tools for the financial services and government industries.”
“We are excited by the advanced predictive analytics that Merkel Science brings to monitoring and vetting blockchain transactions,” Kraken Ventures managing partner Brandon Gath said. “We believe they offer a superior set of products in a market that will see tremendous growth in demand from businesses, financial institutions, and government bodies looking to strengthen their risk management and compliance capabilities. That’s why we are thrilled to be able to support them in their journey to becoming the leading crypto risk and intelligence platform”
Merkle Science said it will prioritize accelerating product development to serve enterprise segments such as law enforcement agencies and financial institutions, continue evolving its Behavior-based Rule Engine to meet the rise of privacy protocols, expand its token coverage to more than 500,000 tokens and customize solutions for decentralized finance and NFT platforms.