After leaving the #FreeTigran protest on Wednesday morning, it was uplifting to attend Solidus Labs’ #DACOMNYC event, where an incredible group of crypto compliance, risk, and financial crime professionals gathered for essential conversations.

Asaf and Chen’s opening remarks set a wonderful tone, with Asaf capturing the warmth of reconnecting with so many familiar faces. Kudos to Amina Turgulova and the Solidus team for organizing such a stellar event with insightful panels.

My personal highlight? Moderating a panel with Nathan Catania from XReg Consulting and James Airo, DeFi Product Lead at Solidus Labs, where we dove into a groundbreaking whitepaper they published here.

The whitepaper explores pre-chain transaction monitoring, a tool with immense potential for sanctions and AML screening in blockchains. Imagine a tool that leverages enriched blockchain data to prevent validators from processing transactions involving sanctioned funds—identifying them before they’re even validated. This could transform compliance from reactive to proactive.

During our prep, I shared my excitement about this idea, only to have James reveal with a smile, “Yeah, we built it—that’s what Staking Guard is.” They’d already created it! 🤣

Tools like Staking Guard are what make me excited about crypto. Traditional finance (TradFi) did its best in sanctions and AML but lacked the transactional visibility that crypto offers. In crypto, the potential to truly screen out illicit funds from the system changes the game in keeping out sanctioned funds and stopping money laundering—because we can detect it before it happens.

I can’t wait to see where this technology takes us!