The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) signed a deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to help its efforts in monitoring the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

What Happened: According to a Forbes report, AnChain.AI CEO and Co-Founder Victor Fang explained that the collaboration started because "the SEC is very keen on understanding what is happening in the world of smart contract-based digital assets," and the firm can help with that.

The company's service focuses on tracking illicit activity across crypto exchanges, DeFi protocols, and traditional financial institutions.

The contract between the blockchain analysis firm and the SEC started in May and probably played a role in AnChain.AI securing a $10 million Series A round led by Susquehanna Group affiliate SIG Asia Investments LLP.

Why It Matters: The regulator is seemingly leveraging the contractor to monitor the DeFi ecosystem more closely, as expected after recent remarks by SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

Earlier this month, he said that some DeFi projects have features that make them look like the kind of entities the SEC is tasked with overseeing.

What Else: DeFi protocols are nothing more than a complicated system of smart contracts, often a great number of them linked together.

For instance, Fang explained that it is actually an amalgam of 30,000 separate smart contracts that manages over $1.8 billion worth of transactions in the 24 hours prior to the Forbes article being published.

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