Real-CATS: A Practical Training Ground for Emerging Research on Cryptocurrency Cybercrime Detection

TL;DR

Real-CATS is a comprehensive real-world dataset of cryptocurrency addresses designed to facilitate research and development of effective cybercrime detection methods in blockchain transactions.

Contribution

The paper introduces Real-CATS, a large-scale, real-world dataset with criminal and benign addresses, enabling practical evaluation and advancement of cryptocurrency cybercrime detection.

Findings

Provides 103,203 criminal addresses and 106,196 benign addresses.

Satisfies C3R characteristics for practical detection.

Supports evaluation, feature extension, and real-world deployment scenarios.

Abstract

Cybercriminals pose a significant threat to blockchain trading security, causing $40.9 billion in losses in 2024. However, the lack of an effective real-world address dataset hinders the advancement of cybercrime detection research. The anti-cybercrime efforts of researchers from broader fields, such as statistics and artificial intelligence, are blocked by data scarcity. In this paper, we present Real-CATS, a Real-world dataset of Cryptocurrency Addresses with Transaction profileS, serving as a practical training ground for developing and assessing detection methods. Real-CATS comprises 103,203 criminal addresses from real-world reports and 106,196 benign addresses from exchange customers. It satifies the C3R characteristics (Comprehensiveness, Classifiability, Customizability, and Real-world Transferability), which are fundemental for practical detection of cryptocurrency cybercrime. The dataset provides three main functions: 1) effective evaluation of detection methods, 2) support for feature extensions, and 3) a new evaluation scenario for real-world deployment. Real-CATS also offers opportunities to expand cybercrime measurement studies. It is particularly beneficial for researchers without cryptocurrency-related knowledge to engage in this emerging research field. We hope that studies on cryptocurrency cybercrime detection will be promoted by an increasing number of cross-disciplinary researchers drawn to this versatile data platform. All datasets are available at https://github.com/sjdseu/Real-CATS