Security auditing platform CertiK, one of the largest in the blockchain ecosystem, has seen its valuation double in the space of a few months, which has now passed the symbolic $2 billion mark. This new capital injection is a testament to the centrality of protocol security in a context where hacks are reaching record amounts.
2 billion for CertiK
The CertiK platform, known for its security audits in the blockchain ecosystem, has just seen its valuation reach $2 billion following a fundraising round reaching $88 million.
The round was completed in a Series B3 financing. Leading the financing are investors Insight Partners, Advent International and Tiger Global Management, who also led the recent NEAR Protocol round just a few days ago.
Other investors include investment bank Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Ventures Capital, among others.
This new capital injection follows CertiK’s previous round of funding last December, when it became a unicorn following an $80 million injection. The company’s valuation doubled in the space of three months.
Ronghui Gu, one of CertiK’s co-founders, said in an interview that the demand for security audits has increased significantly. According to him, CertiK has seen a 12-fold increase in revenue over the past year.
This is hardly surprising, however, given that a significant number of protocols continue to be hacked, especially cross-chain bridges. Indeed, hacks have already claimed many victims in this first quarter of 2022 alone, as evidenced by the recent theft of $620 million in the form of Ethers and USDC on the Ronin sidechain.
Security at the heart of the blockchain
Just like its counterparts specializing in blockchain security, CertiK nowadays occupies a central place in the development of various cryptocurrency-related projects. There are many reasons for this, if only for obvious security reasons and to prevent possible breaches. Decentralized finance protocols (DeFi) are nowadays prime targets, especially for their large liquidity.
According to the press release about this new fundraising, CertiK observes that rug pulls and scams are unfortunately growing in popularity, and that the first solution to address this concern could be a wider democratization of the “Know Your Customer (KYC)” process.
For the enterprise, the key to a more secure future will be transparency. That’s why CertiK offers a ranking of the projects it has audited with related data, which is updated in real time.
At the time of writing, 1,842 projects are currently listed on this ranking, with major players such as Aave (AAVE), Polygon (MATIC), Terra (LUNA), Shibaswap and The Sandbox (SAND).
Finally, CertiK has also deployed Skynet, a solution for real-time analysis of smart contracts, liquidity of decentralized exchanges (DEX), or even identifying flash loans thanks to an on-chain analysis tool.
Recall that in 2021 alone, more than $1.3 billion has been stolen in total from the blockchain world.
