Attribution is the link between a blockchain address and a real-world service or actor — a named exchange, a payment processor, a marketplace, a designated entity. An address with attribution can be reasoned about; an unattributed address can only be described by what it has touched. Most of the distance between a confident decision and a stalled review is whether a name is present.
Consider the same address described two ways. "Unknown wallet with exposure to a high-risk venue" is a reason to hold a transfer and ask questions. "Deposit address at a named exchange" is a reason to release it, because the exchange holds the customer's identity documents and the exposure belongs to a pooled address rather than to your counterparty.
Nothing about the chain data changed between those two sentences. What changed is whether anyone could put a name to the address. That is why attribution work decides how many of your alerts are real problems and how many are a customer being told no for something they did not do.
The entity name appears next to the verdict, with the category of the entity stated — exchange, no-KYC exchange, instant swap service, payment processor, gambling venue, darknet market, designated entity. Where no name is known, the result says what the funds are connected to instead of guessing at an owner.
Paste an address into the Telegram bot to see that in seconds, free, three checks a day. In the workspace the entity is a filter on your case queue and a line in the signed report you forward to a bank or a counterparty.
| What the result names | What it changes for your decision |
|---|---|
| A licensed exchange's deposit address | Your counterparty is that exchange's customer, and the exchange holds their identity file. Usually a release, with the record kept. |
| A no-KYC exchange or instant swap service | Nothing is known about the person behind the funds. A review question, not an accusation. |
| A designated entity | A documented sanctions exposure. Stop, and follow your sanctions policy rather than your risk appetite. |
| No name at all | The decision falls back to what the funds touched and how directly they touched it. |
It moves the argument from speculation to record. A named counterparty can be checked against your own history with them, discussed with a bank, and written into a file that someone else can read. An unnamed one leaves the reviewer describing shapes.
From public and documented sources: addresses a venue publishes itself, addresses listed in designations and enforcement actions, court and law-enforcement records, and analysis of publicly visible on-chain behaviour. What matters for your file is that the result names the entity and names it consistently.
No. It names the service or the actor, not an individual. Identifying a person behind an address is law-enforcement work with legal process behind it, and no screening result does it.
Because most addresses are personal wallets that never acquire a public identity. An absent name is normal and is not itself a negative signal.
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Yes, and mistaken or missing attribution is the single largest source of false positives in crypto screening. That is why a result should let you see the name and the exposure separately rather than folding them into one word.
Send any wallet to the Telegram bot and get a verdict in seconds. Three checks a day, free, no signup. Desks that screen every deposit run it on plans from $199/mo.