The Pulse
Elliptic Launches Decode AI Agent for On-Chain Investigations
Elliptic has launched Decode, an AI agent that answers natural-language questions about crypto addresses, entities and transactions. The system shows its query, reasoning and supporting evidence, and is currently available to government cus
AI.info Team ·
“The market is full of AI that asks to be trusted. That is not good enough when someone asks how you reached a decision,” said Jackson Hull, CTO at Elliptic.
Jackson Hull, CTO, Elliptic
Decode Puts Elliptic’s Intelligence Behind a Plain-Language Interface
Elliptic launched Decode on September 17, 2026, presenting the system as an AI agent for questions about cryptoasset addresses, entities and transactions. The company says users can ask questions in natural language and receive answers in seconds, along with the evidence behind each result.
The launch targets a familiar problem in blockchain investigations: analysts often need to assemble a line of inquiry manually, moving between address records, transaction histories and exposure data. Decode is designed to let a user start with the question instead, then continue through follow-ups without rebuilding the context each time.
Example questions include identifying who controls an address and what it is exposed to, finding stablecoin transfers to sanctioned entities in March 2026, ranking an exchange’s counterparties by volume, and measuring how often a stablecoin appears in scam activity. Elliptic says the system can also run a question across batches of addresses or multiple cases to identify shared counterparties, common destinations and repeated patterns.
Every Answer Includes the Query Behind It
Decode returns ranked tables with plain-language summaries, but the company’s main selling point is the audit trail. Each response includes the query that produced it and shows how the question was interpreted before execution. Elliptic says the system exposes its “Thinking Steps” so reviewers can inspect how it reached an answer rather than accepting an unexplained model response.
The agent can validate a request before answering and refuse questions that the available data cannot settle. Elliptic describes that refusal behavior as a safeguard against confident conclusions that go beyond the evidence. Where the question requires a dataset, Decode can generate and run SQL; where an existing application programming interface is better suited, it can call the relevant endpoint.
Results may appear as a ranked table, a written summary or a qualitative finding about a single entity. The product page also describes structured results that include attribution, categories and fund flows, with findings that can be exported for use in case files.
Built on Billions of Labeled Addresses
Elliptic says Decode runs on its proprietary intelligence platform, which includes billions of labeled addresses and attribution data built since 2013. The company frames that underlying dataset as a distinction from systems that rely only on raw blockchain records.
The agent can draw on the same types of intelligence that support Elliptic’s Lens and Investigator products. Its use is not limited to one address at a time: the company says investigators can examine activity across wallets, counterparties and cases, including funds that move between networks.
Elliptic also says the same question asked against the same data reaches the same conclusion, even if the natural-language summary is worded differently. That claim is intended to address reproducibility in investigations where a second-line reviewer, auditor or regulator may need to retrace the basis for a decision.
Government Customers Get Access First
Decode is live with government customers, according to Elliptic. Private-sector availability is scheduled for later in 2026, with financial-institution compliance teams next in line. The company says it plans to expose the agent to software systems before moving it into Lens and Investigator.
Elliptic’s rollout follows its publication of the Elliptic Standard, a framework for governing agentic AI in on-chain risk. Decode is the first Elliptic product built to that framework, which emphasizes transparency, data quality and human oversight.
The Analyst Still Decides Where the Case Goes
Decode does not close cases or select the direction of an investigation. It can suggest follow-up questions based on the data, but the analyst decides whether to pursue them. That division keeps the product in an investigative support role rather than presenting it as an autonomous compliance decision-maker.
For Elliptic, the product’s commercial argument is speed; its regulatory argument is inspectability. The company says work that previously took hours can return in seconds, but the answer is meant to remain reviewable because the query, interpretation and reasoning stay attached to the result.
That constraint is central to the product. Decode is not being sold as an oracle for crypto risk; it is being positioned as a faster way to ask Elliptic’s data questions that investigators might otherwise postpone, delegate or never formulate.