BlockSec Raises $8Million Funding Round
BlockSec Team has announced that they have raised $8 Million in angel + round of financing. A&T Capital participated in the seed round as the lead investor.
This round of financing was also jointly led by Oasis Capital and Matrix Partners, and co-invested by Mirana Ventures (Bybit investment partner), CoinSummer and YM Capital, with a financing amount of nearly $8 million.
Founded in the second quarter of 2021, BlockSec is a team providing blockchain security service. As a security solution for blockchain developers, BlockSec can provide 24/7 security service from smart contract pre-deployment (e.g., code audit) to post-deployment (e.g., dynamic warning).
In addition to the two professors who are the top talents in the field of security and privacy in China, thanks to the advantage of Zhejiang University, the team also has dozens of doctors/masters with experience in blockchain security research, who can integrate the most cutting-edge technologies to achieve the top level in the industry.
According to the company, BlockSec’s attack blocking system has successfully blocked several hacker attacks. For example, when Saddle Finance was attacked by hackers, BlockSec issued an early warning and successfully blocked the attack. Up to now, BlockSec has recovered more than $5 million in assets for projects including Saddle and HomeDao.
Why did they invest in BlockSec?
1.Project Description
BlockSec can provide 24/7 security service from smart contract pre-deployment (e.g., code audit) to post-deployment (e.g., dynamic warning).
2. Investment Logic
- The blockchain security service market is not saturated, and there is still room for improvement in the content and quality of service.
Not saturated: The auditing part before the official launch of the contract is the rigid need of each blockchain project team, and the emergence of new projects in the market is far beyond the reach of the high-quality security audit service team. It has been the market norm for more than a year that the project party needs to queue up to reserve audit quotas 2 to 3 months in advance.
Room for improvement: In the past six months, security accidents have occurred frequently in the blockchain field, and most of the attacked projects have completed security audits, which reflects that there is still room for improvement in the quality of security services; Considering that the development of blockchain technology is still at an early stage with rapid changes, the matching security service will be a long-term and continuously improving field. - Top security strength in the industry, with significant advantages in the combination of production and research.
Top strengths: Both professors have served as senior security researchers in Qihu 360, and Prof. Wu Lei has rich experience in blockchain security; Prof. Zhou has outstanding achievements in scientific research and has published dozens of articles in security summits. He is also the fourth-ranked Aminer Security and Privacy Scholar in the world and the only scholar in China.
Research advantages: Backed by the rich research resources and academic foundation of Zhejiang University, BlockSec has the ability to reach the front line of blockchain security research and has a rich talent reserve to meet practical business needs and overcome the talent shortage problem which other security teams in the market meet.
Industry Status
- Automated auditing is just getting started
Compared with manual auditing, automated auditing has significant advantages in cost and efficiency. With the increase in the running time of Ethereum Dapp and the enrichment of the Solidity code base, the effect of automated verification has also improved. At present, it has been able to provide some basic scanning functions for security service providers, as well as toC, so that users can have a general understanding of the security of the project;
Limited by the technology itself, formal verification has the disadvantages of high cost and difficulty in adapting to rapidly developing new ecological apps in the blockchain field.
2. The effect of a single audit is limited
Due to the relatively new blockchain field, fast code iteration, and unavoidable omissions in auditing even if the project passes. The audit of a professional organization, there may still be loopholes and attacks, resulting in the following two phenomena:
（1）More and more project parties will apply for both manual auditing and automated auditing services at the same time;
（2）After the code audit is completed, the project still needs a professional organization to provide continuous security support.
BlockSec Business Brief
Before contract deployed:
- Security audit: Based on the basic code audit, through the contract semantic perception inspection scheme, the contract security is deeply audited.
- Vulnerability mining: Through automated fuzzing testing, continuous mining of contract vulnerabilities, a single audit and long-term vulnerability mining are integrated as a whole.
After contract is deployed:
- Attack warning: Dynamically monitor on-chain transactions and pending on-chain transactions and conduct quasi-real-time detection and warning of attacks.
- Attack blocking: Dynamically monitor on-chain transactions attack and block possible attacks as soon as possible.
Market behavior:
BlockSec will spontaneously analyze security events and report security audit results on popular projects to grab market attention.
About BlockSec
The BlockSec Team focuses on the security of the blockchain ecosystem and collaborates with leading DeFi projects to secure their products. The team is founded by top-notch security researchers and experienced experts from both academia and industry. They have published multiple blockchain security papers in prestigious conferences, reported several zero-day attacks of DeFi applications. And successfully protected digital assets that are worth more than 5 million dollars by blocking multiple attack attempts. Besides, they have developed and released some useful tools. Which are widely used and valued by the community to facilitate the analysis of complicated DeFi transactions.
About A&T Capital:
A&T Capital is an early-to-growth stage venture fund for emerging disruptive technologies. Led by three founding partners based out of Berlin, Singapore and Shanghai. They are supported by a global dynamic team of researchers and analysts. Their varied backgrounds in high tech, TradFi and venture capital help them understand what is essential for a startup to succeed. In 2021, they raised 100M pool of funds. Their portfolios include Amber Group, Cobo, Gnosis Safe, Nestcoin, Infstones, Consensys, and Commonwealth.
SOURCE: MEDIUM
