Mitchell Amador, Founder and CEO of Immunefi
Bug bounty and security services provider Immunefi today announced a US$5.5 million funding round from a list of investors that included Blueprint Forest, Electric Capital, Framework Ventures, Bitscale Capital, P2P Capital, IDEO Colab, The LAO, BR Capital, 3rd Prime Ventures, North Island Ventures, and other individual investors.
The company plans to continue acquiring cutting edge security tech and building the “most elite” emergency response team in the industry with the new funding.
They are especially interested in building vulnerability prediction technology and hacker tooling that makes it easier and easier to find vulnerabilities, according to a spokesperson.
Singapore-based Immunefi is a bug bounty platform for smart contracts and crypto projects. It enables security researchers to review code, disclose vulnerabilities, and get paid for it while allowing companies to secure their projects with top security talent.
Immunefi said it was the first on the market to introduce a scaling bug bounty standard, meaning rewards grow accordingly with the severity of an exploit and the volume of funds at risk. By far, it has paid well over US$7.5 million in bounties to whitehat hackers.
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The company was built with the background of rising concerns for security in DeFi protocols.
In a contributed post to e27, Antony Ma, CEO at Hoplite, wrote about the current “arms race” of the cybersecurity industry.
“Cybersecurity services providers and products are increasing their efforts in detecting new attacks (called zero-day vulnerability exploitations) … At the same time, cybercriminals are finding unheard ways to exploit networks. So far, ransomware gangs are winning – now is the time to invent or re-think if the current detection-only methodology is working,” he said.
“In 2020, hackers stole about US$120 million from DeFi protocols in 15 separate attacks. As of the midpoint of this year, there have been at least 23 attacks, netting hackers more than US$1.7 billion in value. The statistics prove security practices are becoming more important than ever, and the Immunefi team uses its expertise to ensure the safety of DeFi projects,” Immunefi said in a press statement.
“DeFi is unique because vulnerabilities in code represent a possibility of a direct loss of users’ money … Bug bounty programmes are open invitations to security researchers to find those vulnerabilities in exchange for a reward, and have proved one of the most effective ways to deal with critical security holes. We believe that by helping launch such programmes on Immunefi, we contribute not only to protecting DeFi projects for today, but also to shaping the tech industry for the future,” says Mitchell Amador, Founder and CEO of Immunefi.
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Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, Bancor, Cream Finance, Compound, and Alchemix are examples of projects that have been using Immunefi to ensure their safety.
Some case studies that the company provided included Belt Finance’s US$1 million payment to a whitehat hacker who discovered a critical vulnerability in the protocol which put more than US$10 million of capital at risk.
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Image Credit: Immunefi
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