​In digital asset markets, manipulation often moves across multiple venues (centralized and decentralized) simultaneously:
​Wash Trading: Buying and selling the same asset to create artificial volume and interest.
​Spoofing & Layering: Placing large orders with no intent to execute them to trick others into buying or selling at a specific price.
​Pump-and-Dump: Artificially inflating a token’s price through coordinated social media hype and automated "sniper" bots, then selling off at the peak.
​Front-Running: Using "mempool" data to see pending transactions and jumping ahead of them to profit from the price movement.
​How Surveillance Tools Work (e.g., Solidus Labs)
​Solidus Labs’ flagship platform, HALO, uses a combination of rules-based logic and machine learning to monitor market integrity in real-time.
Key Players in the Industry
​While Solidus Labs is a leader in trade surveillance, other tools specialize in different layers of the ecosystem:
​TRM Labs & Chainalysis: Leaders in on-chain forensics and Anti-Money Laundering (AML). They track the movement of funds rather than specific trading behaviors.
​Eventus Systems: A major player in traditional markets that has expanded into crypto, providing high-throughput surveillance for high-frequency traders.
​Kaiko: Provides the deep market data (order books, price feeds) that surveillance tools use to identify manipulation.
​Why This Matters Now (2025)
​Regulation has caught up. In Europe, the MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation now mandates that Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs) have robust market abuse detection in place. Similarly, the SEC and other global regulators increasingly require these tools as a prerequisite for approving institutional pro
ducts like Bitcoin or Ethereum ETFs.
​Important Note: These tools are not just for catching "bad actors." They are also used by legitimate market makers and exchanges to prove to regulators that their markets are fair, transparent, and safe for retail investors.
