Today Certik said it raised a Series B extension round of $23 million from Tiger Global and GL Ventures. The startup is best known for performing security audits on public blockchain smart contracts. Last month it announced it raised $37 million in a Series B that included Coatue Management and Coinbase Ventures.
The funding news follows shortly after yesterday’s hack of the Poly Network in which more than $600 million of cryptocurrency was lost as a result of a smart contract security flaw. Some of the funds have been returned. This is precisely the sort of thing that Certik aims to prevent.
“The meteoric rise of decentralized finance has given millions of people the opportunity to become their own bank,” said Pengfei Wang, partner at Tiger Global. “Yet for the innovations to be fully trusted, security must be the focal point. We’re proud to support CertiK in raising the standards of security with the rollout of Skynet Premium. The product pioneers a novel and critical sector of the market: antivirus for blockchain.”
While most security audits combine automation with manual reviews, the new Skynet Premium solution uses machine learning to monitor smart contracts and potential threats in real time. It publishes a rating on a leaderboard.
The startup has worked with over 600 clients in the last year, including Aave, Polygon (not Poly), Binance Smart Chain, and Chiliz. Certik claims the projects it audits secure $70 billion of combined assets.
