In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Vijay Pravin, the founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, an AI-powered, decentralized NFT data platform, discussed why the team calls itself “the blockchain police” and why data is vital.
Vijay discussed key themes, including democratizing data, the convergence of cryptocurrency and AI, and their collective potential to eliminate malicious entities from the blockchain ecosystem.
Vijay also expanded on the resilience of certain NFTs, labeled as ‘survivors,’ emphasizing the critical need for integrity and transparency within the Web3 domain to foster broader acceptance. He also shared his insights on future trends in the gaming industry.
In this interview, Pravin discussed:
- the role of AI/ML in blockchain analytics;
- data integrity and transparency in NFT markets;
- navigating the regulatory landscape;
- the ins and outs of staking mechanisms;
- sustainable economies, network security, and anti-fraud.
Blockchain Police
bitsCrunch is a data analytics company specializing in multi-chain insights for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital assets.
It’s an AI-powered, decentralized data platform that enables developers to build NFT applications (dapps).
“We crunch each and every bit of data. That is bitsCrunch for you,” Pravin told the listeners.
Over the past three years, the team has developed a significant blockchain platform with support from industry giants such as Coinbase, Animoca Brands, Chainlink, and Polygon.
Describing themselves as “the blockchain police,” they aim to enhance blockchain transparency.
Their efforts notably support individuals like ZachXBT, a well-known on-chain researcher, by transforming complex blockchain data into formats that are easily understandable. Pravin highlighted their mission: “We help people make their own shots,” Pravin said.
“We help facilitate people like ZachXBTs in the world. And we would like to produce several ZachXBTs in the future.”
Additionally, they actively investigate and address on-chain malicious activities like wash trading and money laundering.
Wash Trading in Digital Assets has dire consequences!
– Artificial price inflation
– Misleading market metrics
– Market manipulation
– Reduced trustSolution: bitsCrunch Wash Trading Detection!
Check out our use case on how bitsCrunch addresses security measures
— bitsCrunch (@bitsCrunch) April 16, 2024
Pravin provided a couple of examples. One is image-level forensics.
If person A takes an image of person B and puts it on-chain as an NFT, earning thousands of dollars, that’s an infringement of what A owns as a brand.
The same goes for companies: B can’t sell company A’s logo as an NFT because it’s an infringement of company A’s intellectual property (IP).
Therefore, bitsCrunch helps brands protect their IPs.
It already has customers on the brand IP protection side and many more customers on the data side, Pravin remarked.
The Beauty of Crypto and AI
Pravin noted that artificial intelligence (AI) is not new: It’s been “with us for more than a decade now.”
However, it has recently taken off like never before.
Notably, bitsCrunch has been one of the earliest proponents of AI in the crypto space. They’ve supported the use of AI “to clean up the blockchain space” for several years now.
“And then if you look at crypto and AI, the beauty is that it can be applied to any domain, any field,” Pravin said. “And when these two converge, then sky is the limit, I would say.”
The CEO explained that data is everywhere – and a lot of it.
The Fortune 500 companies – including Google, Meta, Twitter, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, and others – are all very different. But they all use data and produce a lot of it.
Data is invaluable, as it can be applied across platforms, domains, and verticals, Pravin remarked.
The same applies to AI and crypto, he added.
The bitsCrunch Network Journey is Beautiful. pic.twitter.com/DKDhfjqWXn
— bitsCrunch (@bitsCrunch) April 16, 2024
Putting data on-chain creates “a ton of value.” At the same time, AI will help find malicious patterns, “figuring out […] what is good and what is bad.”
Furthermore, with the spot Bitcoin ETF approval and potential Ethereum ETF at the door, “I would say AI + blockchain is going to be huge,” Pravin opined.
Importantly for bitsCrunch, he added, the company is well-positioned to capture that momentum.
The team has indexed five chains: Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance, and Solana.
However, AI will help it sift through the data while indexing other chains as well.
“Exciting times ahead,” Pravin said. “[I’m] looking forward to the next few years and seeing how this space is eventually going to blow up.”
Integrating Solana
And speaking of Solana, bitsCrunch just recently announced the indexing of all Solana blocks.
Pravin described this blockchain as “a beast.” It is “clearly way ahead of some of the other chains in the space,” he argued.
However, its integration didn’t happen overnight. The team had to index more than two terabytes of data.
Massive news, #bitsCrunch fam!
We’re bringing comprehensive indexing & in-depth analytics to digital assets, gaming, marketplaces & brands across the entire blockchain landscape, with expanded support for the @solana Ecosystem.
Our AI estimates digital asset value & detects IP… pic.twitter.com/kAFzd78ZGp
— bitsCrunch (@bitsCrunch) March 20, 2024
Moreover, they contacted the Solana Foundation last year. Their foundation and developer teams helped bitsCrunch with the indexing process.
“We wanted to get some tech support because, so far, we have been indexing EVM chains in the past, and Solana is a different beast.”
And because bitsCrunch is a small but growing project, the team was grateful that Solana’s official account retweeted the integration news.
“That shows the trust and the collaboration that we have,” Pravin remarked.
Setting Footprints in NFTs
The team, as the blockchain police, began their work in the NFT space.
The CEO said that they set their footprints during the NFT boom of 2021.
That’s when the company started raising the funds, subsequently seeing major companies backing it.
It was a good time for NFTs, so everybody praised the sector. But bitsCrunch wanted to “look at the dark side of NFTs.”
Notably, very few out of thousands of projects have survived till this day. And some of them have gotten pretty big, establishing major partnerships within and outside the Web3 space.
These include Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, Yuga Labs’ projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, and a few others.
We will be providing IP protection services to Polarise, starting with PolarFighters, the first-ever ERC-1000 standard NFT collection.
To celebrate this we are giving away 2 guaranteed WL spots to 2 random winners. More details soon.
Participate here: https://t.co/G1nAS2EnZg
— bitsCrunch (@bitsCrunch) April 12, 2024
“We want to look into what is good, what is bad,” Pravin said. The team wants to “look into the wash trading aspect of the game” and “see who is flipping charts, who is just here to make a quick buck, and we are also here to check what is the impact of money laundering [the result of which is] money flowing into the NFT space.”
And it’s not only over 200 massive brands the company has indexed so far. Artists are using the platform, too.
They index their art pieces, and the platform can detect any malicious activity related to them, including theft.
Stake-and-Earn: Democratizing Data
One of the aspects to stress about bitsCrunch is that it is decentralized.
Major data protocols – such as Chainalysis, Elliptic, Dune Analytics, and Nansen – are immensely valuable, but they are centralized, Pravin said.
Getting data can be very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Then when you finally receive it, you may not even understand it.
BitsCrunch wanted to democratize this, Pravin remarked. They wanted to offer readable, quick, simple, and affordable service.
The company’s data package starts at $75 a user, Pravin said.
“We want to democratize the data in a few clicks,” he said. “We don’t care where you are from, what you do. All we need is a wallet, which you can connect to the system, and you get access to the API keys or dashboards in just a few clicks.”
But having all these protocols, centralized and otherwise, is necessary to ensure as much transparency and integrity as possible in the space. This will draw more people in and lead to greater adoption.
Contributors are one of the many roles that exist in the bitsCrunch network.
This role allows participants to stake BCUT token to participate in some simple content enrichment /annotation to more advanced contributions like contributing with code or AI model or tooling to the… pic.twitter.com/7sejyR0MFO
— bitsCrunch (@bitsCrunch) April 12, 2024
Additionally, the team felt that having a token is essential. They never ask people to buy BCUT, Pravin stressed. “It’s all about the protocol. It’s all about what we add as value to the ecosystem,” he said.
The coin currently trades on a number of exchanges, including Bybit, KuCoin, Gate, Crypto.com, CoinList, Uniswap, and others.
Furthermore, people can operate nodes for bitsCrunch.
There are nearly 50 node operators today, in addition to more than 700 people delegating tokens, and more than 7 million tokens staked on bitsCrunch.
The company accomplished this in less than two months since the mainnet launch at the end of February.
“We are glad and humbled to have such numbers,” Pravin said.
Eye on the Games
In the end, Pravin commented on Web3 gaming and its growing popularity.
He said that this has been “a long-waiting domain” for the company to explore. The team has been discussing it since 2019.
A lot of capital has been deployed in this sector over the years, and game developers receive “massive funding.”
Every great game has epic collaborations behind it, and our partnership with @bitsCrunch is set to be a classic! Imagine gaming worlds where every character and asset is as dynamic and detailed as the real world. Get ready to play in a universe where innovation knows no bounds.…
— DrAhmetYasinTekin | $MOJO (@MDYasinTekin) April 16, 2024
However, building games takes a lot of time and effort. “And I strongly believe that this cycle will have a lot more games,” Pravin opined.
That said, bitsCrunch will test a lot of gaming, in addition to the real-world assets (RWAs) and NFTs that will be part of the gaming ecosystem.
“I’m really excited and looking forward to [this],” Pravin said.
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About Vijay Pravin
Vijay Pravin is the Founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, a blockchain analytics and forensics company focusing on securing the NFT ecosystem.
Pravin, originally from India, has lived in Munich, Germany, for the last ten years.