Goldman Sachs has joined a $88 million series B round for blockchain and web3 security firm CertiK, according to a press release issued on April 20. That puts Goldman Sachs alongside a list of top-tier investors confident in the promise of the blockchain technology and its ability to bring security to various digital ecosystems.
CertiK boasts more than 200 engineers and scientists who specialise in verifying smart contracts and other digital assets with their proprietary Formal Verification technology. By integrating machine intelligence with manual verification, CertiK can audit even the most complex smart contracts that require serious security validation processes.
The team at CertiK believes strongly in “layers of trust” which functions as additional protection against external threats such as malicious attacks. As firms like Goldman Sachs invest in these critical tools, they are ensuring their digital investments’ overall safety while increasing consumer confidence in blockchain products and services.
Goldman Sachs invests in blockchain security firm CertiK
Goldman Sachs has joined a list of investors in an $88M round funding for CertiK, a blockchain security firm. CertiK focuses on web3 and blockchain security, which has become a priority for many organisations and companies.
This marks Goldman Sachs’ foray into the blockchain industry and is a sign of the growing acceptance of blockchain technology. Let’s take a look at how this investment may impact the industry.
Overview of CertiK
CertiK is a blockchain security firm founded in 2017 by experts from Yale, Columbia and industry leaders from Google, Alibaba, and Baidu. CertiK’s mission is to secure the world’s
most valuable digital assets on public blockchains such as Ethereum, EOS, Tezos and Polkadot.
CertiK provides certified guarantees which are generated from formal verification which is a mathematical proof that tracks back to source and confirms that code follows the formal requirements. In addition, CertiK’s proprietary technology enables it to test for various scenarios to give users a proof of correctness allowing them to trust their digital assets to keep secure with less risk than ever before.
Goldman Sachs has recently joined other investors such as Binance Labs — the venture arm of crypto exchange Binance — in an $88 million financing round for CertiK. With Goldman Sachs joining the round, it is one of the largest investments in a blockchain security company over the last decade. The new funds will drive development across Certik’s core product lines — Formal Verification-as-a-Service (FVaaS), BlockShield and TrustMines.
Goldman Sachs joins other investors in $88M round for web3 and blockchain security firm CertiK
Today, Goldman Sachs joins the ranks of other notable investors including Binance Labs, CMT Digital, Metamorphic Ventures and Paradigm in participating in a $88 million round of financing for blockchain security firm CertiK.
CertiK is a web3 and blockchain security-focused platform that provides customers with secure applications and networks while performing verification procedures on the code of decentralised protocols. The company uses several innovative technologies to ensure the highest levels of accuracy and security in its analysis. These technologies include formal verification methods that can help eliminate potential security risks and improve overall code-efficiency.
According to CEO, Bo Jiang, the $88 million round will go towards helping CertiK further expand its service offerings. Recently CertiK announced plans for several new projects including a smart contract certification system that will make it easier for developers to build legacy web applications on web3 composers and off-chain data feeds providing better interoperability between data sets.
This new injection of capital from Goldman Sachs marks another step forward in developing solutions to improve the protection found within modern blockchain networks while lowering financial barriers associated with these kinds of projects. Keeping these kinds of systems secure has been an issue since the emergence of blockchain technology, but with this sort of investment it’s clear that big names in finance are taking steps towards finding a resolution.
CertiK’s mission and technology
CertiK is a blockchain and web3 security firm that works to protect users’ data on the decentralised web. Founded in 2017, the firm’s mission is to build the trust infrastructure of the web3 era by making the blockchain more secure and user friendly.
Goldman Sachs recently joined other investors in a $88 million funding round for CertiK, which uses new technologies like formal verification, blockchain-based certification, and cutting-edge security protocols.
Let’s take a deeper dive into CertiK’s mission and technology.
CertiK’s mission to secure smart contracts and blockchain networks
CertiK is a web3 and blockchain security firm that works to secure smart contracts and blockchain networks. Founded in 2017 by Yale, Columbia and Google researchers, the company’s mission is to build trust into the core of blockchains. Through its proprietary formal methods model checking technology, CertiK identifies and prevents potential errors in source code before it goes live on a network with more accuracy than manual code reviews or automated testing.
CertiK has developed an innovative suite of cutting-edge products to keep users and developers safe as they build dapps on Ethereum, Polkadot, and other protocols. The company’s flagship product, CertiK Shield™, is a tamper-proof smart contract audit system that provides real-time security assurance so users can trust their data without fear of malicious attacks or bugs. In addition, users who deploy Shield contracts get a seal of approval that proactively defends against new vulnerabilities even after deployment.
The CertiK platform also offers white glove services, like backend testing and secure configurations. Working with CertiK gives development teams access to additional forms of protection when building secure protocols, dapps on Ethereum networks or participating in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). By leveraging CertiK’s automated formal verification engine and advanced human review processes— which can include manual code walkthroughs—ICO issuers are empowered to avoid future security issues from their token offerings by verifying code integrity before launching new projects into production.
Led by the same team that conceived the technology for web3 security products like Etherscan VerificationTM for digital wallets, BizShieldTM for assets custody control, ChainSafeOKTM for control over chain permissions management systems such as Oracles as well as numerous coding tool sets like Static Security Improvement (SSI), CROSSREF CHECKER®️and OASIS2®️ , Goldman Sachs joins other investors in $88M round for web3 and blockchain security firm CertiK with promise the web3 will benefit from a wider rollout of Certified Smart Contracts using its proprietary standards through the platform’s Networked Intelligence Framework (NIF).
CertiK’s technology
CertiK’s technology resolves the challenges posed by the complexity and immutability of digital assets built on blockchain. Built upon formal verification — a branch of mathematics known as real computing — CertiK leverages dynamic test generation, machine-checkable proofs, and manual security reviews to ensure software correctness and transparency.
Through its technologies for smart contract development, attackers can be thwarted from reverting transactions or manipulating a network’s functionality – trading away with valuable assets at stake. In addition, this new technology makes it possible for developers to prove that the logic of their codes is correct in all cases – no matter how convoluted their smart contracts become.
CertiK has also developed software tools that enable its customers to audit smart contracts quickly and cheaply by automating key steps in the formal verification process. For example, test generation technology can generate test cases while offering various proof methods such as model checking, theorem proving, and static analysis to ensure that a given code compiles without errors or vulnerabilities.
The team at CertiK offers full stack security solutions with sound economic design ensuring that behaviours governing digital asset transfer are robustly enforced, guaranteeing code safety while drastically reducing gas costs associated with secure smart contracts auditing operations. With Goldman Sachs recent investment, CertiK will continue innovating in this space and expanding their platform capabilities so developers have more opportunities to build safer distributed ledger applications.