What is chain analysis?

Chain analysis traces funds on public blockchains and groups addresses into likely owners, using the public record together with outside data such as exchange records, address labels and leaks.

Also called blockchain analytics.

What it looks at

  • Addresses spent together, and change returning to the sender.
  • Reused addresses and the same amounts moving in and out.
  • Labels for exchanges, apps and known wallets.
  • Timing, such as when an address is active during the day.
  • Outside data that puts a name on one address, after which the rest of the cluster follows.

Who uses it

Exchanges and compliance teams use it to screen deposits, investigators use it to follow stolen funds, and anyone with a block explorer can do a simple version of it. So can people looking for someone worth robbing.

In Redacted

Redacted keeps actions on-chain and the rules public, and takes away the visible link between your wallet and what you do next. The deposit into the Reserve stays public, and matching amounts and times can still narrow a crowd, so moving different amounts than you deposited matters.

How privacy works →

Related terms

Linked addressesLinked addresses are addresses that chain analysis attributes to the same owner, most often because they were spent together in one Bitcoin transaction. Once one of them is tied to a name, all of them are.Address reuseAddress reuse means receiving more than one payment to the same address. Every payment to it is then linked to all the others, and to everyone who sent them.Anonymity setAn anonymity set is the group of people a given action could have come from. The larger it is, the harder it is to tell who did it.

Sources: Privacy, Bitcoin Wiki

Updated October 7, 2026. All terms