Singapore’s Merkle Science raises $5.7m as it enters US market

Merkle Science, a Singapore-based predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform, announced raising $5.75 million in its Series A funding round following its launch into the US market.

The funding round was led by venture capital firm Darrow Holdings with participation from Kraken Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Token Bay Capital, Kenetic, and Lunex Ventures.

Founded in 2018, Merkle Science is the next-generation predictive cryptocurrency risk and intelligence platform that helps crypto companies, financial institutions, and government entities detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies.

Its Blockchain Monitoring tool leverages Merkle Science’s proprietary Behavioral Rule Engine to go beyond the blacklists — which are inherently backward-looking — so that compliance teams may detect illicit activity from their incoming and outgoing cryptocurrency transactions and meet their local KYC/AML compliance obligations.

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,” said the firm’s co-founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik.

Unlike other blockchain monitoring and investigative tools on the market, Merkle Science’s claims its platform takes a behavior-based approach to transaction risk management, resulting in more proactive and effective crime monitoring and investigations.

“The behavior-based approach 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,” the company added.

Merkle Science has grown from strength to strength, achieving a dominating presence in the APAC region since its seed round in May 2019. With clients across APAC, Europe, and North America, the firm has grown its revenue by over 900% and its headcount has tripled in size over the past two years.

In the past six months, institutional interest for cryptocurrencies and compliance in the US has surged, which has prompted both the co-founders to move their base to New York as part of Merkle Science’s expansion plans.