The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly signed a six-figure deal with a blockchain analytics startup AnChain.AI in order to be able to better monitor and regulate the fats-growing decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

AnChain.AI was founded by Dr. Victor Fang (who is the CEO) and Ben Woo (who is the COO). Fang, who holds “15+ patents on AI for cybersecurity and fraud detection solutions”, has “over a decade of experience in Data Science leadership roles at FireEye Mandiant, Awake Security, Greylock, Pivotal, and EMC.”

As for Co-Founder and COO Ben Woo, he is “an award winning enterprise big data and artificial intelligence product veteran with over two decades of engineering executive experience at leading technology companies in Yahoo, Dell EMC, and Pivotal.”

Two products the firm offers that could to be of interest to the SEC are AML compliance solution BEI API and CISO (stands for “Compliance, Investigation, Security, Operations”), which “connects pseudonymous addresses to real-world entities, and allows you to intuitively graph and investigate cryptocurrency transactions in mere minutes.”

The company also provides security services in the areas of code security, infrastructure security, and transaction security.

According to a Forbes report (published on August 27) about the firm’s deal with the SEC, a company spokesperson told them that “the initial value of the contract is $125,000, with five separate one-year $125,000 option years for a total of $625,000.”

The AnChain.AI CEO had this to say:

“The SEC is very keen on understanding what is happening in the world of smart contract-based digital assets…so we are providing them with technology to analyze and trace smart contracts.“

The report follows on the heels of recent comments by SEC chair Gary Gensler asking DeFi projects to register with the regulatory body. Gensler had previously argued that DeFi teams constitute centralized units and therefore would be required to comply with the SEC’s regulations. 

Under Gensler, the SEC has doubled down on its effort to look for cryptocurrency projects that are “offering investments that should be regulated.” Gensler has also said he would ask Congress to help provide legislative solutions to fill in the regulatory gaps created by digital assets.

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