CertiK, a blockchain and smart contract security platform backed by major investors like Tiger Global, recently closed a $24 million Series B+ funding round. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors Binance, OKEx, Coatue, GSR Ventures, and more.
CertiK aims to solve the major security issues blockchain and smart contracts face. In this article, we’ll discuss the problem CertiK seeks to solve and how its security solutions differ from the status quo.
What is CertiK
CertiK is a blockchain and smart contract auditing platform launched in 2018 to ensure the reliability of the security and correctness of blockchains, software applications, and smart contracts. CertiK aims to help developers create a new level of trust with their products. In addition, it provides consumers with an impartial way to understand the safety and correctness of their code, ensuring that businesses don’t risk their products failing due to undetected vulnerabilities.
CertiK uses formal verification techniques to prove that certain properties hold for all computations done by a system (in this case – blockchain systems, software applications, and smart contracts). These techniques are designed to remove code issues from the process and replace them with mathematical assurance that all computations are correct. This enables CertiK users to specify exactly what they want regarding assurance when coding their product – including bugs, loopholes, malicious attacks, double-spending behaviour and more.
This system runs CertiK’s proprietary DeepSEA programming language verifier over code written in Solidity or other languages supported by DeepSEA such as Java or C++. This ensures you can be sure your program produces desired results within the bounds you specified in your objective statement. In addition to code verification services, CertiK also provides consulting services that look at web pages or contracts not related to development projects and research papers related to existing studies on verification protocols or suggested modifications/improvements for existing systems built on blockchain or Ethereum networks platforms.
Overview of CertiK’s Series B+ Funding Round
On June 17th, 2021, CertiK, a leader in blockchain security and audit technology, announced the successful completion of its Series B+ funding round. The round is an extension of their Series B funding that totaled $30 million and was led by Coatue Management. Other participants included Binance Labs, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sky9 Capital, Digital Currency Group and CMT Digital.
The $50+ million raised will accelerate the platform’s enterprise-grade smart contract security development and provide capital to support CertiK’s growing customer base. This marks a 100x increase in funding over the past two years as the team has worked tirelessly to fulfil its mission to make blockchain secure and accessible to all people.
CertiK is a comprehensive platform for on-chain audits that leverages rigorous formal verification methods to detect bugs and vulnerabilities in smart contracts with unmatched accuracy. With the added capital from this round, CertiK plans to expand their reach into new market segments beyond their traditional strength in enterprise financial services technology (such as DeFi) through identifying potential vulnerabilities in other types of public blockchains – including Ethereum classic (ETC), Ontology (ONT), DFINITY (DFN) , NEO , EOS , Tezos (XTZ), Thundercore , Elastos (ELA) and more . Additionally, more analytics tools are set to be released on CertiK’s platform to improve user accessibility and governance features are also planned.
The Problem CertiK Seeks to Solve
The blockchain security platform CertiK has recently raised $24 million in a Series B+ funding round from Tiger Global Management. With this new funding, CertiK seeks to solve the blockchain industry’s major problem with smart contracts and digital assets: security.
CertiK will focus on auditing the codes of smart contracts and digital assets, thus making sure that the blockchain is secure. But, first, let’s look at the problem CertiK seeks to solve.
Blockchain Security Vulnerabilities
The distributed ledger technology that underpins blockchain networks is premised on the ability to process and store data securely. Yet, the decentralised structures of these networks create unique opportunities for malicious actors to exploit. These security vulnerabilities are often a result of coding errors, poorly written smart contracts, or incomplete risk assessments before deployment.
CertiK is a blockchain security platform pioneered by Computer Scientists at Yale and Columbia University that seeks to address these vulnerabilities in the blockchain space by providing static code analyzers and an end-to-end security solution for verifying trustworthy systems. Using formal verification methods, CertiK’s solution can detect bugs early in a project’s development phase while facilitating transparency into the underlying system structure.
CertiK’s static code analysis can detect potential bugs arising from incorrect logic within programs and any discrepancies between a program’s expected input/output specifications and its actual behaviour from runtime results. With this level of analysis, developers can pinpoint vulnerabilities before they endanger their project’s operations or even their users’ funds. Moreover, thanks to CertiK’s formal verification methods and industry leading programming language support – including Python, Solidity and C/C++ – developers are assured greater usability across multiple languages for both front-end and back-end applications..
Certik thus provides users with an easy way to verify their trustworthiness of projects or entries in smart contracts using their advanced tools — powered by automated theorem proving (a mathematical process) — helping users catch bugs early in the development process before they become costly down the line. In addition, CertiK offers basic plans and tailored packages customised to suit individual projects needs so users can rest assured that all security requirements have been met without sacrificing agility during development cycles.
The Need for Automated Verification
The need for automated verification for smart contracts and blockchain-based applications, including when conducting financial transactions, has never been higher. In addition, smart contracts continue to expand in the blockchain space, with them the necessity to ensure their bug-free and secure operation.
CertiK—a formal verification platform built on game theory —solves this problem by providing a layer of technology that solves all issues related to the validation of digital assets through cryptographic proofs, mathematical models, and executable code. By developing CertiKChain’s proprietary technology, CertiK has brought additional security to the digital asset market by making it easier for smart contract developers or users of digital assets to verify any digital asset at any moment.
It can verify any addressable asset — from distributed ledgers such as a Bitcoin block explorer or Ethereum blockchain explorer, to a random contract address — using algorithms derived from game theory. Furthermore, it can identify bugs before they affect users or cause economic loss due to bad coding or malicious intent.
CertiK Raises $24m in Series B+ Funding Round from Tiger Global
CertiK recently raised $24 million in a series B+ Funding Round from Tiger Global and is leading the way in developing auditing tools and technologies to secure the blockchain space. They aim to solve the inherent security vulnerabilities in the blockchain industry, by providing verification and security certification tools.
In this article, we look at how CertiK helps secure the blockchain space, and what makes them stand out from their competitors.
Automated Formal Verification
CertiK offers innovative technological solutions that utilise automated formal verification to ensure smart contract safety and security.
Formal verification uses a defined set of mathematical rules to precisely verify the correctness of an implementation before it is deployed into production networks. This process plays an important role in verifying the responses of a smart contract to different scenarios to ensure its adherence to pre-defined protocols and protocols as defined by developers.
CertiK’s solution uses automated formal verification, which allows for the rapid detection of potential traps, unintended bugs, and malicious intent within any code or infrastructure. It can accurately identify safety issues during code compilation or when deployed and verifies whether code complies with regulations or industry-specific best practices and standards. In addition, CertiK’s formal verification technology provides enhanced confidence by securely establishing trust in crypto assets across multiple networks, including blockchain-operated applications.
Security Audits
When developing software and smart contracts, security must be a top priority. Unfortunately, because of our ever-evolving digital landscape, loopholes frequently go unnoticed, which can result in significant financial loss due to theft or the manipulation of user data. CertiK is working to eliminate these problems by offering on-chain assurances and safety guarantees through our security audit services.
CertiK has built a decentralised platform comprising an intuitive Layer Technology system combining formal verification and manual testing to ensure code accuracy, with substantial financial penalties for errors or inaccuracies found during code reviews. Tests results are compared with simulation results to later be submitted for peer reviewing before issuance is granted. The Layer technology works first by studying the project’s source code for syntax errors, runtime logic errors, potential vulnerabilities, better practices compatibility (Solidity version specifications), front end compatibility metrics (e.g user login-process page grade,) as well as checking all imported libraries from remote repositories such as ERC20 tokens and storage techniques (IPFS).
Once done it goes through an intensive manual testing phase conducted by certified experts who verify each use case and every function on a given piece of software using second pairs of eyes -accounting-, coding-, hacking-, UX/UI-and cryptography experts that can be selected depending on the clients need to ensure its reliability against attacks stemming from overt coding errors or malicious intent both financial/data sensitivity related. This process should ensure that every piece of code in the deployment packet meets certik’s set standards before being released into its production state. Furthermore all audit findings will have generated detailed reports reflecting both potential bugs in certain contracts and identified human writing mistakes for easier reproduction of the audited source code step-by-step if needed.
Ultimately there is no single silver bullet solution but rather a combination mitigating effort leading towards trustless interaction between developers, users while keeping full control over their data while enjoying their sensible money transactions through a robust blockchain infrastructure audited at its essence by CertiK’s pioneering online platform reducing costs while enriching quality assurance protocols on a global scale.
Benefits of CertiK’s Solution
CertiK, a blockchain and smart contract security platform, recently raised $24 million in a Series B+ funding round from Tiger Global. It is pioneering a security-focused approach to blockchain development and has already developed various products to make blockchain technology more secure.
In this piece, we will discuss the benefits of the solutions that CertiK provides and how it can help improve blockchain technology’s security.
Increased Security
CertiK’s security solution offers improved protection when compared to traditional computer security methods. The platform is a fully decentralised system that provides an extra layer of security. It enables users and developers to monitor the performance and stability of the smart contracts in their application.
CertiK’s rigorous mathematical verification process uses a combination of formal verification, manual testing, and real-world contract analysis to provide the highest level of assurance for users and developers alike. Using CertiK’s approach, developers can ensure that their smart contracts have no bugs or malicious back doors; users can be confident that their investments will be secure from attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the code.
In addition to providing increased security for users and developers, CertiK offers transparency by providing a detailed audit trail of each contract review, so stakeholders can see how attention was paid to each element explored by the audit team. This ensures that malicious activity can be identified quickly and any gaps or issues in code integrity are addressed and mitigated with minimal disruption. As a bonus, CertiK relies on a wealth of robust economic incentives that act as further deterrents against malicious actors seeking to exploit system vulnerabilities or create exploits through audited smart contracts.
Improved Efficiency
Certik’s solutions improve the reliability and efficiency of the software and systems built by its patrons. Its patented security protocols have been proven to detect faults, bugs, and anomalies in code before they are implemented, eliminating the chances of encountering problems in a live environment. This prevents costly bug fixes and patches that often become required after an application is deployed.
CertiK’s solutions also make it easier for developers to comply with industry regulatory standards, reducing time-consuming paperwork and streamlining development processes. CertiK’s services also increase resource usage as they reduce development time cycles while improving system operation performance through reliable cybersecurity implementation techniques.
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