Glossary
FreezeRadar terminology and reference definitions
A compact knowledge base of terms used across freezeable-asset risk, sanctions screening, and wallet monitoring.
These definitions explain the language you will see throughout FreezeRadar scan results and the explorer archive: how issuers freeze or blacklist a wallet, what counts as sanctions exposure, how counterparty risk is scored, and the difference between a freezeable asset like USDT or USDC and a token that no issuer can unilaterally block. Each entry links back to the scan and explorer pages where the concept shows up in practice.
Freeze Mechanisms
How issuers technically freeze, blacklist, or destroy tokens at the contract level.
addBlackList Function
addBlackList is the specific smart contract function, most notably in Tether's USDT contract, that an authorized owner address calls to add a wallet to the token's blacklist. After it executes, that wallet can no longer send or receive USDT, though it keeps every other asset it holds.
destroyBlackFunds Function
destroyBlackFunds is an owner-controlled function in Tether's USDT contract that permanently burns the token balance held by an already-blacklisted address, reducing that wallet's balance to zero and reducing the token's total supply by the same amount.
Freeze Authority
Freeze authority is the specific on-chain permission, held by an issuer, program, or designated account, that allows freezing a token balance. On Solana it is a literal field set at mint creation; on Ethereum-style tokens it is implemented through owner-restricted contract functions.
Frozen Balance
A frozen balance is the amount of a token an address holds that it can no longer transfer, because the issuer has blacklisted, paused, or otherwise restricted that address at the contract level. The balance is still visible on-chain; it is simply non-transferable.
isBlackListed Function
isBlackListed is a public, read-only function on the USDT contract that anyone can call to check whether a given address currently carries the blacklist flag. It costs no gas to call off-chain and returns a simple true or false.
Issuer Freeze
An issuer freeze is any action a token issuer takes through its own contract authority to stop an address from moving a specific asset, whether that is blacklisting one address, pausing the entire token, or destroying a balance outright. It is a governance action, not a network-level event.
Issuer-Controlled Assets Explained
A glossary-style explanation of issuer-controlled assets, what control rights usually exist, and why the term matters for screening and operations.
Kill Switch
A kill switch, usually implemented as a pause function, is a contract-wide control that halts all transfers of a token for every holder simultaneously, rather than targeting one address. It is the most extreme freeze mechanism because it affects the entire token supply at once.
Multisig Blacklist
A multisig blacklist is a blacklist mechanism where the owner authority that can add or remove addresses is itself a multi-signature wallet requiring several independent keyholders to approve the action, rather than a single controlling key.
removeBlackList Function
removeBlackList is the counterpart function to addBlackList: an owner-controlled call that clears the blacklist flag on an address, restoring its ability to send and receive that token. It does not automatically restore a balance that was already destroyed with destroyBlackFunds.
Stablecoin Blacklist
A stablecoin blacklist is an on-chain list, maintained by the token issuer, of addresses blocked from sending or receiving that specific token. Once an address is added, the issuer's smart contract rejects transfers to and from it, while the address keeps normal control over every other asset it holds.
Tainted USDT
Tainted USDT refers to Tether tokens that carry a realistic risk of being frozen because of their transaction history, even though they are not currently blacklisted. The taint comes from provenance — how the funds got to a wallet — not from any difference in the tokens themselves.
Token Burn
A token burn is the permanent, irreversible destruction of a specific quantity of tokens, removing them from circulating supply. In a freeze context, an issuer burns tokens at a blacklisted address as the final step after a freeze, so the balance cannot later be unfrozen and spent.
Risk Categories
The wallet risk labels FreezeRadar assigns during scans, from mixers to sanctioned addresses.
Cross-Chain Bridge
A cross-chain bridge is infrastructure that moves value between separate blockchains, typically by locking or burning an asset on the source chain and minting or releasing an equivalent on the destination chain. Bridges matter to risk analysis because they can break or complicate provenance tracing across chains.
Crypto Mixer
A crypto mixer, or tumbler, is a service that pools deposits from many users together and redistributes them, deliberately breaking the traceable link between a deposit address and a withdrawal address. Interaction with a known mixer is one of the strongest single behavioral risk signals in on-chain analysis.
Darknet Market
A darknet market is an online marketplace, accessible only through anonymizing networks like Tor, primarily used to trade illegal goods such as drugs, stolen data, or weapons, using cryptocurrency as the near-exclusive payment method. Exposure to a known darknet market address is a well-established high-risk signal.
Exploit Address
An exploit address is a wallet identified as the destination of funds drained through a smart contract vulnerability — a hack of a DeFi protocol, bridge, or exchange hot wallet caused by a code flaw rather than social engineering or credential theft.
Gambling Platform
A gambling platform, in a risk-screening context, refers to a cryptocurrency casino or betting service, particularly one operating without a license in the jurisdictions it serves. These platforms are watched not because gambling itself is inherently illicit, but because they are a well-documented layering technique for laundering funds.
High-Risk Exchange
A high-risk exchange is a cryptocurrency trading platform with weak or absent identity verification, a history of processing illicit funds, or operations concentrated in jurisdictions with limited regulatory oversight. Funds passing through one carry elevated, though not automatic, risk.
OTC Desk
An OTC (over-the-counter) desk is a service that arranges large cryptocurrency trades directly between two parties, off the public order book of an exchange, usually to avoid the price impact a large order would cause on-screen. Most OTC desks are legitimate infrastructure; the category is watched because it is also a common route for laundering large sums.
Phishing Address
A phishing address is a wallet that received funds obtained by tricking a victim into signing a malicious transaction or approving a fraudulent token spending allowance, typically through a fake website, wallet-drainer link, or impersonated support contact.
Ransomware Wallet
A ransomware wallet is an address confirmed to have received extortion payments from a ransomware attack, where victims pay to regain access to encrypted systems or to prevent stolen data from being published. These wallets are typically identified through incident-response investigations and published by researchers or law enforcement.
Reputable Exchange
A reputable exchange is a trading platform with established identity verification, sanctions screening, and a track record of cooperating with law enforcement and regulators. Exposure to a reputable exchange is treated as a neutral or risk-reducing signal, the opposite end of the spectrum from a high-risk exchange.
Sanctioned Address
A sanctioned address is a wallet formally designated by a government body — most commonly OFAC in the United States — as blocked property, meaning it is illegal for U.S. persons to transact with it. It is the highest-severity label FreezeRadar assigns.
Scam Address
A scam address is a wallet identified as collecting funds through deliberate deception — a fake investment scheme, a romance scam, a fraudulent token sale, or a phishing campaign impersonating a legitimate service. It differs from a phishing address mainly in the mechanism used to obtain the funds.
Stolen Funds
Stolen funds is a broad risk category covering any cryptocurrency confirmed to have been taken without authorization, whether through a hack, an exploit, a phishing scheme, or theft from a compromised account. It is the umbrella label that exploit and phishing addresses both fall under.
Suspicious Service
Suspicious service is a catch-all risk label for an address tied to an operation showing multiple laundering-adjacent characteristics — unusual pooling behavior, no identifiable legitimate business, or patterns matching known illicit infrastructure — without yet fitting cleanly into a more specific category like mixer or darknet market.
Terrorism Financing
Terrorism financing is a risk label applied to wallets with credible evidence of funding or receiving funds for a designated terrorist organization or activity. It is treated as a critical-severity category alongside direct sanctions matches, given the legal and humanitarian stakes involved.
Analysis Patterns
On-chain behavior patterns FreezeRadar looks for when tracing fund flow and provenance.
Address Poisoning
Address poisoning is an attack where a scammer sends a tiny, often zero-value, transaction from a wallet address deliberately crafted to closely resemble one the victim has legitimately transacted with before, hoping the victim later copies the wrong address from their own transaction history.
Attribution Confidence
Attribution confidence is a measure of how certain a risk-screening tool is that a given address label — an exchange, a mixer, a scam operation — is actually correct, rather than a guess based on incomplete or circumstantial evidence. It is what separates a confirmed finding from a possible one.
Circular Flow
A circular flow is a pattern where funds move through a sequence of addresses and eventually return, in whole or in part, back to a wallet controlled by the original sender. It can indicate wash trading, artificial volume generation, or an attempt to manufacture a misleading transaction history.
Counterparty Concentration
Counterparty concentration measures how much of a wallet's transaction volume flows to or from a small number of other addresses, rather than being spread across many independent counterparties. High concentration with a risky counterparty amplifies that counterparty's risk contribution to the wallet's overall score.
Dormant Reactivation
Dormant reactivation is when a wallet that has been inactive for an extended period, often months or years, suddenly resumes transaction activity. It is watched because long dormancy followed by sudden movement is a common pattern when funds tied to an old hack, scam, or sanctioned entity finally get laundered.
Dusting Attack
A dusting attack is the practice of sending tiny amounts of cryptocurrency — "dust" — to a large number of wallets, typically to later track which addresses interact with or combine that dust in future transactions, deanonymizing the wallet owner's broader holdings.
Fan-In Fan-Out
Fan-in fan-out describes a wallet that receives funds from many separate source addresses (fan-in) and then redistributes them to many separate destination addresses (fan-out), often in a short time window. The structure is common to both legitimate aggregation services and deliberate obfuscation.
Hop Distance
Hop distance is the number of transactions separating a wallet from a risky address in its transaction graph. A wallet that received funds directly from a sanctioned address has a hop distance of one; a wallet that received funds from an address that itself received funds from that sanctioned address has a hop distance of two, and so on.
Pass-Through Wallet
A pass-through wallet is an address that receives funds and forwards nearly all of them onward within a short window, holding little to no residual balance. It functions as a relay point in a transaction chain rather than a genuine destination.
Peel Chain
A peel chain is a laundering pattern where a wallet repeatedly sends most of its balance forward to a new address while "peeling off" a small amount at each step, typically toward an exchange. It produces a long, thin sequence of transactions rather than a single large movement.
Provenance
Provenance, in on-chain analysis, is the traceable history of where a wallet's funds originally came from — the chain of prior transactions and addresses that led to the current balance. Establishing provenance is the foundation that every other risk finding, from sanctions exposure to pattern detection, is built on.
Velocity Spike
A velocity spike is a sudden, sharp increase in the rate or volume of a wallet's transaction activity compared to its established baseline — many transfers in a short window after a period of relative quiet. It is a classic early-warning signal in both crypto and traditional transaction monitoring.
Compliance & Screening
AML, KYC, and sanctions-screening terminology used across crypto compliance programs.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
AML, short for anti-money laundering, is the body of laws, regulations, and internal controls designed to prevent criminal proceeds from being disguised as legitimate funds. In crypto, AML programs typically combine identity verification, transaction monitoring, and wallet screening against known risk indicators.
FATF
FATF, the Financial Action Task Force, is the intergovernmental body that sets global standards for combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Its recommendations, while not legally binding on their own, are adopted into national law by member countries and shape crypto regulation worldwide.
KYA (Know Your Address)
KYA, or Know Your Address, is the practice of assessing the risk profile of a specific blockchain address itself — its history, labels, and behavior — independent of who legally owns it. It is address-centric screening, distinct from customer-centric KYC.
KYB (Know Your Business)
KYB, or Know Your Business, is the corporate equivalent of KYC — verifying the identity, ownership structure, and legitimacy of a business customer, including its beneficial owners, rather than just an individual. It applies when a crypto platform onboards a company rather than a person.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
KYC, or Know Your Customer, is the process of verifying a customer's identity before or during onboarding, typically through government-issued identification, proof of address, and increasingly biometric checks, so a business knows who it is actually dealing with.
KYT (Know Your Transaction)
KYT, or Know Your Transaction, is the practice of screening individual cryptocurrency transactions and the wallet addresses involved for risk indicators, in real time or near real time, rather than relying solely on one-time identity checks performed when a customer first signs up.
OFAC SDN List
The OFAC SDN List — Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List — is the primary U.S. sanctions list maintained by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, naming individuals, entities, and, increasingly, specific cryptocurrency wallet addresses that U.S. persons are prohibited from transacting with.
Risk Score
A risk score is a single summary value, usually on a defined scale, that represents a wallet's or transaction's overall likelihood of illicit involvement, calculated by combining multiple underlying findings — sanctions exposure, risk labels, behavioral patterns, and hop distance — into one number.
Sanctions Screening
Sanctions screening is the process of checking a customer, counterparty, or wallet address against current government sanctions lists — OFAC's SDN list and its international equivalents — before or during a transaction, to avoid prohibited dealings and the legal liability that follows.
SAR (Suspicious Activity Report)
A SAR, or Suspicious Activity Report, is a formal filing a financial institution — including a crypto exchange — is legally required to submit to a national financial intelligence unit when it identifies a transaction pattern that appears potentially connected to money laundering, fraud, or other financial crime.
Source of Funds
Source of funds is the documented origin of a specific sum of money or crypto — where it came from and how it was legitimately obtained — that a business or counterparty may require evidence for before accepting a large transaction. In crypto, this typically means tracing the on-chain provenance of the funds involved.
Transaction Monitoring
Transaction monitoring is the ongoing, automated review of a customer's or wallet's transaction activity over time, looking for patterns that indicate money laundering, fraud, or sanctions evasion, rather than screening each transaction in isolation.
Travel Rule
The Travel Rule is a regulatory requirement, originating from the Financial Action Task Force, that virtual asset service providers share originator and beneficiary information — names, and often account numbers or wallet addresses — with each other when transferring funds above a set threshold on a customer's behalf.
VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider)
A VASP, or Virtual Asset Service Provider, is FATF's regulatory term for any business that conducts activities like exchanging, transferring, safekeeping, or administering cryptocurrency on behalf of customers — exchanges, custodians, and many wallet providers all fall under this definition.
Wallet Screening
Wallet screening is the general practice of checking a cryptocurrency address against risk data — sanctions lists, entity labels, and behavioral analysis — before accepting funds from it, sending funds to it, or onboarding it as a counterparty. It is the umbrella term for what a FreezeRadar scan does.
Wallet & Compliance Checks
Common searches for checking a wallet, address, or stablecoin balance before you transact.
AML USDT Check
An AML USDT check is a wallet screening specifically focused on Tether (USDT), reviewing an address for sanctions exposure, current or past blacklist status, and counterparty risk before you send, receive, or accept USDT from it.
Crypto Address Risk Lookup
A crypto address risk lookup is a search-style check where you enter a single wallet address and receive back a summary of every risk indicator associated with it — sanctions status, entity labels, freeze status, and behavioral findings — in one report.
Crypto Wallet Risk Check
A crypto wallet risk check is a general-purpose screen of an address across every major risk category — sanctions, issuer freeze status, entity labels, and behavioral patterns — regardless of which specific asset the wallet primarily holds.
Frozen Wallet Checker
A frozen wallet checker confirms whether a specific address is currently subject to an active issuer freeze — blacklisted, paused, or otherwise restricted — across the freezeable assets it holds, so you know before you try to transact whether funds will actually move.
OTC Risk Screening
OTC risk screening is wallet and counterparty screening applied specifically to over-the-counter crypto trades, run before a trade settles rather than after, since OTC deals typically involve larger sums and less recourse than an on-exchange trade if something goes wrong.
Sanctioned Wallet Checker
A sanctioned wallet checker screens an address against current government sanctions lists — most importantly OFAC's SDN list — to confirm whether transacting with it would be legally prohibited, and typically also checks for indirect exposure through recent counterparties.
Stablecoin Freeze Checker
A stablecoin freeze checker verifies whether a wallet is currently restricted from transacting in a specific stablecoin — USDT, USDC, or another issuer-controlled token — by checking that token's live blacklist or pause state directly against the issuer's contract.
USDT Blacklist Checker
A USDT blacklist checker is a tool that queries Tether's smart contract directly to tell you whether a given wallet address currently carries the blacklist flag, meaning it is unable to send or receive USDT.
USDT Freeze Checker
A USDT freeze checker is a focused tool that confirms whether a wallet is currently blacklisted on Tether's contract for a specific network — Ethereum, Tron, or another chain USDT is issued on — since blacklist status is set separately per deployment, not globally across all of them.
Wallet Compliance Report
A wallet compliance report is a documented, shareable summary of a wallet's risk screening results — sanctions status, labels, freeze history, and provenance findings — typically produced to keep as evidence of due diligence for a transaction, audit, or regulatory review.