Writing the report

Graduate · enrolled learners

This lesson opens with On-chain investigative reporting and public recoveries, 2021 onward.

What happened

The independent investigator known as ZachXBT became one of the most cited on-chain researchers by publishing investigations that trace stolen funds and expose scams, under a pseudonym and without a public identity. Wired's 2024 profile reports that, by his own count, which he broke down for Wired in a spreadsheet, his hundreds of investigations have directly led to the recovery of around 210 million dollars, with another 225 million in seized funds he had a less direct hand in, and that he now often shares his findings with law enforcement agencies before publication. This lesson reads a defining feature of that work as reproducibility: the reports name the addresses, cite the specific transactions, and lay out the trail so any reader can open a block explorer and verify the evidence for themselves. Because the underlying data is public and the reports point straight at it, these investigations have moved from a written thread to real consequences, funds recovered and leads handed to law enforcement. On this reading the power is not the author's authority; it is that the evidence is checkable and the report shows exactly where to check. A claim that says trust me is weak; a claim that says here are the transactions, verify them yourself is strong, because it invites the reader to confirm rather than to believe.

The decision point

An on-chain report has an advantage no ordinary investigative report has: its evidence is public, so it can be written to be reproduced rather than believed. That is the standard to write to. A report that names the addresses, cites the transactions, and lays the trail out step by step lets a skeptical reader, an exchange compliance team, or a law-enforcement analyst follow the same path and reach the same conclusion, and a report that asserts a conclusion without the transactions asks to be trusted and earns less. Combined with the confidence discipline of this course, the form is clear: state each claim, show the on-chain evidence for it, and mark the confidence, so the reader sees not only what you concluded but exactly how, and can check it. The measure of a good on-chain report is whether a stranger who distrusts you can reproduce it, and the ones that met that bar are the ones that turned into recoveries.

Orientation and Year One are open: anyone can read them without an account. From Year Two onward the lessons are for enrolled learners, because progress through the later years only means anything if it is tracked against a record.

It is free. We do not sell the list and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.