The administrator of dark.fail, a website providing verified links to darknet markets, claims that exchanges are unfairly closing accounts donating Bitcoin to the service later implementing a Chainalysis transaction flagging system.

The admin declared in a tweet that two donors of Bitcoin to the website had their accounts blocked by exchanges that recently implemented Chainalysis' new KYT — or Know Your Transaction — blockchain monitoring service.

The admin believes there is a connection between the account closures and its staunch and vocal criticism of Chainalysis, however the accounts may only have been flagged automatically due to links to the darknet. While the site tin can be viewed equally a gateway to the darknet, night.fail'south Twitter bio classifies the account every bit an: "Bearding journalist researching Tor: the uncensored internet."

Dark.fail is a long standing critic of Chainalysis KYT flagging accounts as suspicious with no avenue for appeal. In Jan. 2020, the admin accused the blockchain analytics company of enabling the "theft" of client funds that had been marked as suspicious by subconscious KYT processes.

One of dark.fail's BTC donation addresses, listed on the website dwelling folio recently equally Dec. 2, 2020, contains nearly 40 transactions. The BTC donation option has since been removed from the website, which now merely accepts contributions in the form of privacy coin Monero.

Chainalysis describes KYT as "an automatic, real-time cryptocurrency transaction monitoring and compliance solution" which is used to notice patterns indicating "risky activity." It is currently used by over 150 companies in 40 different countries. Chainalysis has too assisted authorities-led investigations in the past, helping to break up a notorious ransomware network last calendar month.

While nighttime.fail's status equally an "anonymous journalist" is debatable, the study comes among an temper where journalist practices tin be labeled as criminal activities. On Mon, a letter signed past the ACLU and other ceremonious right defense groups called for the U.S. Section of Justice to drop charges confronting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, likening his indictment to "a grave threat to press freedom."

In May 2019, one of the oldest websites about darknet related subjects, DeepDotWeb, was seized past law enforcement after its administrators were arrested on money laundering conspiracy charges. The two admins are suspected of taking millions in cryptocurrency kickbacks from darknet markets listed on their website.

According to stats provided by alexa.com, nighttime.fail is one of the nearly pop darknet market link providers on the internet, ranked #52,345 globally in terms of website traffic.

Cointelegraph has contacted Chainalysis for comment and volition update this story with their response.