AML Screening
Blockchain Level AML Screening
Because Plume is a public blockchain, we operate our own infrastructure that lets us integrate industry standard technologies that screen all transactions. We are the only public and permissionless blockchain that runs AML at the sequencer level.
Screening process
All transactions on the Plume mainnet network are submitted through the Plume RPC before being sent to the Plume sequencer for ordering and execution.
Once the RPC receives the transaction, the transaction details (to address, from address, value, inputs) are forwarded to the Forta Firewall API. Forta leverages and augments industry standard data sets across TRM, Chainalysis, and Elliptic.
Once Forta Firewall receives transaction details, it performs compliance screening, followed by security screening.
Firewall simulates the transaction with the details provided and generates traces which reveal the “internal” transactions as well as generated event logs. This process is equivalent to “unpacking the transaction” to see all the individual component parts, and all of this happens inside the firewall in milliseconds.
The unpacked transaction data is then parsed to extract the wallet addresses involved. Wallet addresses are the closest analogy we have to a person or entity’s identity onchain.
The extracted wallet addresses are then screened against the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list of the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) (commonly referred to as the “OFAC Sanctions List”).
The OFAC sanctions list is fetched from the official US Treasury Department OFAC API available at https://sanctionslist.ofac.treas.gov/Home/index.html
The OFAC sanctions list does not change often, but Firewall fetches it once every 24 hours
If a transaction is found to involve an OFAC-sanctioned address, the Firewall API returns an error response (indicating that it will be blocked) to the Plume RPC, and the transaction is dropped before the execution process.
False Positives
In the context of compliance screening, a false positive (FP) would be a blocked transaction that did not involve a sanctioned or other high risk wallet address. While FPs are technically possible, we don’t foresee this occurring given how the compliance screening is performed. Forta Firewall screens each address in the transaction against a blacklist. The determination is binary - the address is either on the list or not. Additionally, onchain actions like contract deployments would never be blocked by the Firewall unless the transaction involves a sanctioned address.
FPs are more likely, and expected even, in the context of Firewall’s security screening where the determination is risk-based. In either case if an FP is identified, we will investigate and address the cause as soon as reasonably possible. Once resolved, if the transaction is resubmitted by the user, the transaction should be processed and executed normally.
Information requests
Plume protocol teams and end users may request screening information related to their transactions. Requests can be sent to [email protected]
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