SCIENTER

Forward-deployed engagement

Your first forensic answer in five working days

A fixed-price, fixed-date engagement against your real counterparties. The dashboard, the report and the queries behind every figure are yours.

Why this exists

The tools that reason cannot reproduce; the tools that reproduce cannot reason

An institution deciding whether to put capital behind an on-chain counterparty has two kinds of instrument available, and needs both. The analytics platforms will show you a wallet's history; they will not tell you whether the record means anything, because that is a statistical judgement and a dashboard does not make judgements. The consultants will make the judgement; they will hand you a slide, and six months later nobody can rerun the number that slide turned on.

What is missing is the thing in between — an engagement that reasons over the data and hands back the apparatus, so the finding survives the person who found it. That is what a sprint delivers: a dashboard that keeps running, a report that states its method, and the queries that produced every figure in it, in a repository you own.

The other half of the problem is time. A procurement cycle for an enterprise data platform is measured in quarters, and the counterparty decision is on the calendar for the fourteenth. A sprint is priced and dated at signature and delivers inside that window, because the alternative is not a slower answer. It is no answer, and a decision made without one.

How it works

Five steps, and the price is fixed at the second one

Everything before the signature is free and everything after it is committed. That boundary is what makes a fixed date something we can stand behind rather than something we hope for.

  1. 30 minutes, no charge

    Step 1. The discovery call

    You describe the decision you are about to make and the counterparties it turns on. We say plainly whether public chain data can answer it, and if it cannot, we say that on this call rather than after the invoice.

  2. One business day

    Step 2. The written scope

    We send a scope document: every address, every chain, the date window, the question each entity answers, and the exact artefacts you will receive. You approve it in writing. The price and the delivery date are fixed at that signature and do not move.

  3. Two, five or ten working days

    Step 3. The sprint

    We build against your real addresses in your real window — not a demo, not a sample. You get a written note at the end of each day saying what was found, what was ruled out, and what tomorrow tests. Nothing is saved for the reveal.

  4. On the date in the scope

    Step 4. Delivery

    The dashboard, the report, the queries and the extracted data, handed over in full. From the Full Sprint up, a recorded 60-minute walkthrough with the engineer who wrote it, then 30 days of shared-channel support for questions about the findings.

  5. Your decision, within 30 days

    Step 5. The licence, if you want it

    The dashboard is yours either way. If it should keep running against live data, it converts to an annual licence at the published rate and the sprint fee credits against the first term. If it should not, nothing further is owed and the work you already have does not expire.

What you get

Three sizes, one method

The method does not change between them. What changes is how many entities are in scope, how long we have to resolve the relationships between them, and whether the finding leaves with a document your own investors can read.

Edition one.

Discovery Sprint

$5,000

2 working days · $2,500 per day

Up to 1 wallet or entity in scope.

One counterparty, one question, and a decision that is already on the calendar.

  • A written scope you approve before any work starts — the addresses, the chains, the window, and the question each will answer
  • A custom dashboard built against your entity, deployed for you and yours to keep
  • A written forensic report: the finding, the method, and the figure behind every claim
  • The underlying queries and the extracted data, so your own analysts can rerun the work
  • No walkthrough call is included at this tier
  • No support window after delivery

Edition two. The usual size

Full Sprint

$15,000

5 working days · $3,000 per day

Up to 10 wallets or entities in scope.

A set of counterparties that may be related, and a committee that will read the answer.

  • A written scope you approve before any work starts — the addresses, the chains, the window, and the question each will answer
  • A custom dashboard across every entity in scope, deployed for you and yours to keep
  • A written forensic report: the finding, the method, and the figure behind every claim
  • The underlying queries and the extracted data, so your own analysts can rerun the work
  • Entity resolution across the set — which of these addresses are one party
  • A 60-minute recorded walkthrough with the engineer who did the work
  • 30 days of shared-channel support after delivery, for questions about the findings
  • No co-branded methodology whitepaper at this tier

Edition three.

Deep Sprint

$35,000

10 working days · $3,500 per day

Up to 30 wallets or entities in scope.

A book, a fund family, or a treasury — where the answer has to survive an auditor.

  • A written scope you approve before any work starts — the addresses, the chains, the window, and the question each will answer
  • A custom dashboard across every entity in scope, deployed for you and yours to keep
  • A written forensic report: the finding, the method, and the figure behind every claim
  • The underlying queries and the extracted data, so your own analysts can rerun the work
  • Entity resolution across the set — which of these addresses are one party
  • A 60-minute recorded walkthrough with the engineer who did the work
  • 30 days of shared-channel support after delivery, for questions about the findings
  • A co-branded methodology whitepaper, written to be shown to your own investors or auditors

The fee converts

Sign an annual licence within 30 days of delivery and the sprint fee credits against the first year, up to the full value of that year. The credit does not carry forward and is not paid out in cash. If you do not sign, nothing further is owed and everything already delivered stays yours — the dashboard does not switch off at the end of the window.

Specification

The three tiers, side by side

Forensic Sprint tiers compared by duration, price, scope and deliverables
TermDiscovery SprintFull SprintDeep Sprint
Engagement fee$5,000$15,000$35,000
Working days2510
Rate per day$2,500$3,000$3,500
Wallets or entities11030
Custom dashboard, yours to keepIncludedIncludedIncluded
Written forensic reportIncludedIncludedIncluded
Queries and extracted dataIncludedIncludedIncluded
Entity resolution across the setNot includedIncludedIncluded
60-minute recorded walkthroughNot includedIncludedIncluded
30 days of support after deliveryNot includedIncludedIncluded
Co-branded methodology whitepaperNot includedNot includedIncluded

Who it is for

Three questions we can answer this month

Every capability named below is shipped and documented. Nothing here describes something that would have to be built first.

A fund evaluating counterparty exposure

You are about to place capital behind a market maker whose entire track record is a screenshot of a P&L curve and a reference from someone who also has money with them.

Usually a Full Sprint · $15,000

What the sprint returns

We reconstruct the book from public fills: realised P&L separated from funding, the share of the whole return that came from a single position, the drawdown the screenshot cropped, and whether the addresses they showed you are the addresses that actually carry the risk. Where the record is too short to judge, we say it is too short to judge rather than scoring it anyway.

A DAO risk committee auditing incoming grants

Six applicants, six sets of addresses, and a treasury vote next week. Nobody on the committee can tell you whether those six are six independent teams or two teams and four wallets.

Usually a Full Sprint · $15,000

What the sprint returns

We cluster the addresses on funding relationships and behavioural co-movement, and report which of them resolve to one party — with the specific evidence for each link, so a committee member who disagrees can check it. Then we trace where prior grants went in the thirty days after receipt.

An exchange vetting a listing candidate

A token team claims organic distribution. Your listing committee needs a number it can defend if the position is questioned six months from now.

Usually a Deep Sprint · $35,000

What the sprint returns

We measure the holder distribution against the funding graph, identify the holders funded from a common source, and quantify how much of the apparent float is independent. The report states the method precisely enough that the team can dispute the finding on the method rather than on your judgement.

Who does the work

One engineer, and the instrument he built

This is a one-person practice. Iliya takes the discovery call, writes the scope, runs the queries, builds the dashboard and signs the report. There is no account manager between you and the work, no analyst pool the engagement is handed down to, and no bench — which is the honest cost as well as the honest benefit. We run a small number of sprints at a time, and the calendar is the constraint rather than the price.

The instrument is not new work. It is a forensic stack that has been running against Hyperliquid and EVM chains for months: population-scale Deflated Sharpe scoring, wallet clustering and entity resolution, temporal return decomposition with permutation tests before any style is named, provider accuracy benchmarking, and a reasoning layer that drafts findings from collected evidence and is refused by a verifier when it cites a figure the evidence does not contain.

What that machinery is for is judgement — deciding when a record is too short to score, when a pattern is a coincidence at this sample size, and when the honest answer is that the data cannot settle the question. A sprint is that judgement, applied to your entities, with the working shown.

Before you ask

The ten questions procurement asks

Answered with commitments rather than reassurances, because a memo cannot be written from a reassurance.

Who owns the deliverables and the findings?

You do. The dashboard, the report, the queries and the extracted data are assigned to you on final payment, and you may publish, redistribute or resell them without asking us. We retain ownership of the pre-existing platform the work was built on and of general know-how, which is the standard carve-out and the only one — we claim no licence back over your findings, and we do not reuse your scope as a case study without your written permission.

What do you do with our data, and what do you keep?

The chain data is public and stays public. Anything you send us that is not — an internal address list, a counterparty name, a memo — is held only for the engagement, is never used to train a model, and is deleted within 30 days of the support window closing unless you ask us in writing to keep it for a follow-on sprint. We will sign your data processing terms; a mutual NDA is signed before the discovery call if you would rather.

Do you need our keys, our accounts, or our API credentials?

No. The default sprint runs entirely on public chain data and needs nothing from you but the addresses and the question. If you want your own venue data included we will take a read-only, withdrawal-disabled API key, held for the engagement and revoked at delivery — but that is your choice to offer, never a condition of the work. We never take a private key, a seed phrase, or a key with trading or withdrawal permissions, under any circumstances.

What exactly arrives, and in what formats?

A deployed web dashboard, on your own subdomain or ours, that you keep. A written report as PDF and Markdown. The extracted datasets as CSV and JSON. The queries and analysis code as a git repository you own. From the Full Sprint up, a recorded 60-minute walkthrough as a video file. Everything is a file you hold, not a login you rent — if we disappeared the week after delivery, you would still have the work.

What happens if the sprint finds nothing?

You get a report that says so, with the same rigour as one that finds something, and the fee stands. "These six addresses show no evidence of common control, and here is the test that would have detected it" is a finding — it is frequently the finding that unblocks a decision, and it is the one an engagement paid on results would be quietly incentivised not to return. We publish our own negative results for the same reason; the post-mortem on our own signal engine is on the site.

Do you take positions in the names you analyse?

Not during your engagement and not for 30 days after delivery, in any asset or counterparty within your scope. It is a term in the master agreement rather than a promise on a page. Outside your scope we operate a market data product and may hold positions generally; if a specific conflict emerges mid-sprint, we disclose it to you in writing and you decide whether we continue.

Can you commit to the delivery date, and what if you miss it?

Yes, once the scope is signed — the scope is what makes the date honest. If we deliver late through our own fault, the fee reduces by 10% for each business day, capped at 50%. If a delay is caused by something you owe us, we tell you the day it happens and the date moves by agreement rather than silently. We do not offer an uptime SLA on the delivered dashboard, and you should not accept one from a practice this size.

What is the refund policy?

Before the sprint begins you may cancel for a full refund, less scoping work already done, which is capped at $500 and waived if we were the reason. Once the sprint starts the fee is earned: the work is bespoke and cannot be resold. If we fail to deliver the artefacts named in the scope at all, the fee is returned in full. There is no satisfaction clause, because a finding you did not want is not a defect.

Is any of this investment advice?

No. A sprint is research and engineering work, delivered to you about entities you named. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything, and not an opinion on whether a transaction is suitable for you — we do not know your objectives, your constraints or your book, and we do not ask. No advisory relationship and no fiduciary duty is created by engaging us. Nothing in a report should be acted on without your own advisers.

Whose contract do we sign, and what happens after the support window?

Ours is ready and short — a master agreement, a mutual NDA, and a one-page statement of work per sprint — and we will work from your paper instead if your legal team prefers it. After the 30 days, three doors: nothing, and you keep everything as delivered; another sprint under the same master agreement with a new statement of work; or an annual licence to keep the dashboard running live, against which the sprint fee credits if you sign within 30 days of delivery.

Next step

Thirty minutes, and we tell you whether the data can answer it

The discovery call costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If public chain data cannot settle your question, you will hear that on the call rather than after the invoice.

Fixed price · fixed date · $5,000 to $35,000 per engagement

Disclosures

Forensic Sprint engagements are research and engineering services, not investment advice. A sprint analyses third-party entities you identify; it is not advice about your own portfolio, objectives or circumstances, which we do not collect. Nothing delivered is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset, and no advisory or fiduciary relationship is created by commissioning a sprint. Findings describe what the data shows and may be incomplete or superseded. Take your own advice before acting.

Not investment advice. Past performance ≠ future results. Signals and commentary are provided on an impersonal, non-individualized basis and are not tailored to any recipient's financial situation (see Lowe v. SEC, 472 U.S. 181 (1985)). Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Consult a licensed advisor before making investment decisions.

Prices are quoted in US dollars and exclude any taxes or withholding that apply in your jurisdiction. The terms on this page summarise the master agreement and the statement of work; where they differ, the signed documents govern.