Immunefi, a bug bounty, and security services provider, announced today a US $5.5 million funding round led by 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.
With the additional cash, the business wants to continue acquiring cutting-edge security technology and establishing the industry’s “most elite” emergency response staff.
According to a representative, they are particularly interested in developing vulnerability prediction technologies and hacker gear that makes it simpler to identify flaws.
Singapore-based Immunefi is a smart contract and crypto project bug bounty programme. It allows security researchers to evaluate code, expose flaws, and get compensated for their work, while also allowing businesses to safeguard their projects with top security talent.
Immunefi claims to be the first company on the market to implement a scaling bug bounty standard, which means that payouts increase in proportion to the severity of the exploit and the amount of money at stake. It has given out over $7.5 million in bounties to whitehat hackers so far.
The firm was founded in response to growing worries about DeFi protocol security.
“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.
Immunefi has been used to assure the safety of initiatives such as Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, Bancor, Cream Finance, Compound, and Alchemix.
Belt Finance paid a whitehat hacker US $1 million after discovering a serious weakness in the protocol that placed more than US $10 million in the capital at risk, according to the company’s case studies.
