Arkham Controversy | User referral code emails exposed, is the information trading market encouraging doxxing?

After Arkham launched on the Binance Launchpad, it immediately sparked a series of controversies. The airdrop-weighted recommendation points caused controversy as the referral code generation mechanism made it easy to search for the email addresses of referees. The information trading market introduced by Arkham was also described by the community as "Dox to earn" and "Snitching-as-a-service."

Arkham Airdrop on July 18

In addition to being listed on Binance Launchpad, accounting for 5% of the total supply, Arkham promptly announced on Twitter that they would be airdropping to early users on July 18. The amount of the airdrop will depend on the referral points earned by users through their referral code.

The crypto community quickly discovered concerns about the referral code generation mechanism and criticized Arkham.

Controversy over Arkham Referral Program

Arkham's referral program allows users to share a unique referral code, which is encoded in Base64 using the user's email. This allows for easy decoding of the original referrer's email address.

As shown in the image below, the referral code bGV2aWV0NzQ5MEBnbWFpbC5jb20= can be decoded back to an email using online tools. This led to widespread criticism from the crypto community, accusing Arkham of not taking user privacy seriously.

Arkham: Updated Referral Code Generation Mechanism

Arkham CEO Miguel Morel stated that the referral link generation mechanism was introduced during platform testing to reward referring users. He pointed out that when others use a referrer's link, the referrer's email is visible on the registration page to show that the referral code comes from a legitimate user.

However, Morel emphasized the need to update this mechanism as Arkham's user base grows. Therefore, all referral codes have been changed to an encrypted version of the referrer's email address, making it impossible to decode.

On Ref Links

Because of our upcoming launch, we’ve had millions of people engage with our platform and hundreds of thousands sign up. Understandably, there’s been a lot of attention on our project, the majority of it positive, along with some legitimate criticisms of how we’ve… pic.twitter.com/0VZFchBg7h

— Miguel Morel | Arkham (@RealMiguelMorel) July 10, 2023

Controversy Surrounding Arkham Intelligence Information Trading Market

After announcing the Launchpad on Binance on July 10, Arkham also introduced the online information trading platform "Arkham Intelligence," allowing users to anonymously trade user information of any wallet address through smart contracts.

Buyers on Arkham Intelligence can initiate bounties for any address, while sellers provide wallet address information to receive rewards. Sellers can sell user information through auctions and fixed pricing methods.

To prevent spam information, sellers must provide a "deposit," and providing incorrect information may result in the platform confiscating the deposit.

Arkham stated:

Arkham Intelligence provides online detectives with a platform to monetize their skills by providing information for profit. This creates a liquid information auction market, where buyers have 90 days to discover as much Alpha information as possible.

Arkham hopes to build an intel-to-earn economic model by using smart contracts and decentralized mechanisms.

Arkham Intelligence, like the airdrop, went live on July 18, which the crypto community described as "Dox to earn" and "Snitching-as-a-service."