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 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.
What it means
Wallet screening can happen at different points in a workflow: before a large OTC deal, before crediting a deposit on an exchange, before releasing goods or services in exchange for payment, or as a periodic re-check on an address a business interacts with regularly. The right timing depends on the use case, but the earlier it happens relative to an irreversible action, the more useful the result is.
Comprehensive wallet screening combines several distinct checks that this glossary covers individually: direct sanctions and blacklist matching, entity label lookup, multi-hop provenance tracing, and behavioral pattern detection. A screening result that only performs one of these checks — a direct blacklist lookup alone, for instance — misses the exposure that indirect or behavioral analysis is specifically designed to catch.
Real-world example
An OTC desk running wallet screening on a counterparty's payment address before a large trade checks for direct sanctions matches, known risk labels, and unusual behavioral patterns, rather than relying solely on whether the address has ever been formally blacklisted.
Related terms
In FreezeRadar
A FreezeRadar scan is a complete wallet screening check in one request: sanctions, labels, provenance, and behavioral patterns, combined into one report.
By FreezeRadar Team
Research and product team behind FreezeRadar.
Related reading
Continue exploring FreezeRadar knowledge content.