Discovering Persistent Behavioural Patterns for Interpretable Blockchain Forensics

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 13 Aug 2026] Discovering Persistent Behavioural Patterns for Interpretable Blockchain Forensics Dorottya Zelenyanszki, Zhe Hou, Kamanashis Biswas, Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy Public blockchain data enables large-scale DeFi-related analysis, but many existing approaches are application-specific, difficult to scale, or hard to interpret. This research proposes a scalable, application-agnostic framework for \emph{persistent behavioural pattern discovery} from large-scale blockchain activity. It constructs behaviour sentences enriched with contract, token and market context, then applies a two-step embedding process: sentence-level embeddings capture individual actions, while sequence-level embeddings capture user behaviour over time. An interpretable behavioural profiler characterizes discovered communities through behavioural motifs, routines, temporal dynamics, entity exposure, and suspiciousness evidence. Evaluation on Ethereum using over 30 million transactions shows that the framework uncovers both routine and malicious behavioural patterns, including decentralised exchange (DEX) trading, NFT activity, phishing, bot operations, oracle manipulation, and rug-pull schemes. Importantly, many patterns remain stable across independent observation windows, enabling the identification of long-term behaviours beyond a single analysis period. The proposed framework combines scalability, interpretability, and persistence analysis, supporting blockchain forensic investigation, behavioural attribution, and threat discovery. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Machine Learning (cs.LG) Cite as: arXiv:2608.12864 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2608.12864v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.12864 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Dorottya Zelenyanszki [view email] [v1] Thu, 13 Aug 2026 06:23:28 UTC (82 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs cs.LG References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)