In a Nov. 20 blog from CipherTrace, the firm stated that the patents would include forensic tools to explore Monero (XMR) transaction flows to assist in financial investigations, statistical and probabilistic methods for scoring transactions and clustering likely wallet owners, as well as visualization tools and ways to track stolen or illegally used XMR.

“CipherTrace’s Monero tracing capabilities will allow [Virtual Asset Service Providers] to identify when inbound XMR may have criminal origins, allowing them to adequately risk rate customer transactions per any required regulations,” the blog stated. “[Our] goal is to enable the detection of criminal users, therefore increasing the safety and sustainability of privacy coins like Monero in the future.”

While Bitcoin (BTC) is still the preferred medium of exchange for many darknet market users, there has been increasing acceptance for privacy coins like XMR. Law enforcement agencies have not yet determined a reliable way to trace Monero, and firms like CipherTrace have an opportunity — the company has reportedly been working on a means to trace XMR transactions since early 2019.