[SCAN 2026 Final Interview] ⑦Chaos of KAOS: Aiming for Victory through On-Chain Analysis and Tracking Agent Automation

Chaos of KAOS team image. Source=Chaos of KAOS
The world’s first digital asset tracking competition, ‘SCAN 2026’, will be held on September 28 at 9 AM at Monaco Space in Seocho-gu, Seoul.

SCAN 2026 is organized by the digital asset information company DAsset, with global blockchain data platform Chainalysis participating as a CTF (Capture The Flag) partner, aimed at enhancing cybersecurity and investigative capabilities in digital assets.

The final will feature the top 20 teams from the preliminary round (a total of 416 teams, 754 participants).

conducted written interviews with teams composed of global investigative agencies, security experts, and university students who advanced to the finals.

*The teams advancing to the finals are as follows. (In alphabetical order)

0xfun / 1nf1n1ty / 67 / BITSkrieg / CertiScan / DeFiHackLabs / EDCCS / Funds Went to Kerning City / hello / IBarelyKnowHer / J0y_B0y / lazarus2026 / Lv1x / Project Sekai / T34M1 / Tardigrades / Tornado Cats / youtiaos / Upside Academia / Chaos of KAOS

Q. What do you think is your team's greatest strength or unique problem-solving approach?

"Our team has experience in smart contract security and on-chain analysis. We structured the procedures necessary for problem-solving to be executed by agents.

In the preliminary round, we ran agents for each challenge simultaneously, processing problems from Solana, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base Sepolia in parallel. When multiple flags are linked to the same incident, the addresses and analysis conditions found earlier were carried over to the next task, accumulating the context of the incident for analysis.

The fact that we implemented domain knowledge into a reusable automation system is our team’s greatest competitive advantage.

Additionally, we have our own Ethereum Archive Mode, which differentiates us from other teams."

Q. What led to the formation of your team, and what backgrounds and expertise do the team members have?

"Of the four team members, three are graduates of Upside Academy’s second and third cohorts, so they are already proficient in on-chain analysis and interested in asset tracking, which led to the formation of the team.

Three of our team members work in offensive security at a consulting firm called KAOS Labs. Offensive security involves analyzing systems from the attacker’s perspective to identify security weaknesses.

The remaining team member is preparing for employment and joined the team because of our shared experience at Upside Academy."

Q. You passed the preliminary round with 416 teams participating in SCAN 2026 and advanced to the finals. What are your feelings about advancing to the finals and what was the most memorable moment during the preliminary process?

"Our goal was to advance to the finals, but we were really happy to qualify with an unexpectedly high rank of 7th in the preliminaries. I remember the intense moment when our rank rose to 3rd and then suddenly dropped to 10th."

Q. What was the most difficult problem or situation you faced while solving the SCAN 2026 preliminary problems? How did you approach and resolve the problem?

"Identifying plausible incorrect answers was more challenging than finding the correct answer itself.

In Challenge 3, the Pink Drainer problem, when calculating the total fees received by the operator, multiple public indexing services returned similar but inconsistent values. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that some services were missing internal call data, leading to different results.

After re-collecting internal transfers from Etherscan, I verified the missing data against the execution structure of individual transactions.

This experience taught me that in blockchain analysis, the reliability of data is more important than using multiple tools."

Q. What tools, technologies, and analysis methods did you use for on-chain data analysis and fund flow tracking in the preliminary round? If you developed any programs or analysis methods, please introduce them as well.

"In the preliminary round, we had a blockchain analysis harness set up in advance.

The key was to quickly access data from various chains and reach the correct answer with minimal daps.

In terms of tools, we used Archive RPC to query past states of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Solana, and utilized Dune, BigQuery, Etherscan, and chain-specific explorers to find a wide range of transaction and address candidates. For Solana, we prepared auxiliary tools like Helius, and for Bitcoin, Esplora, tailored to the characteristics of each chain.

The analysis method was relatively straightforward. First, we quickly narrowed down candidates using indexing services or explorers. Then, we re-verified using raw on-chain data such as transactions, receipts, event logs, traces, and past balances.

We calculated using minimum unit standards like Wei, Lamport, and Satoshi, and distinguished between the current state and the past state at the time of the problem.

We created a tool that checks address-hash formats, field counts, sorting orders, units, and hash input values to reduce submission errors. It was particularly useful in problems where the order of long-form flags or multiple values was important."

Q. What preparations are you making ahead of the finals?

"We are focusing on optimizing our analysis agents. We are developing individual analysis skills by directly analyzing the asset flows from various hacking incidents."

Q. If you win first place in the finals and receive a prize, what would you like to do?

"I would like to have a big team dinner at a hotel buffet."

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