Jesse Walden
Investing in Blockaid: Protecting Users Onchain
We believe all the world’s value will eventually move over crypto rails. But for web3 to reach that level of adoption, it has to be safe. Today, even among cryptonatives, there is a prevailing anxiety about interacting with malicious contracts or malware—and the consequences of something actually going wrong are untenable.
This is the mission-critical problem Blockaid aims to solve. We believe the company is positioned to excel in a massive and resilient market as more and more value moves onchain.
Over the last year, Blockaid has been working in stealth with some of the biggest applications, wallets, and infrastructure providers to protect their users from fraud, phishing, and hacks. Its engine monitors smart contracts, scans frontends and URLs, and simulates transactions to detect malicious activity—not unlike the virus scans or spam filters that are ubiquitous in web2.
Blockaid has already established itself as a major player via partnerships with marquee names in the space, including integrations with Metamask, Opensea, Rainbow and Zerion to name a few. Moreover, these are full-fledged, deeply embedded integrations that can run client-side to protect user privacy in a way that simple API integrations can’t.
Furthermore, Blockaid’s technical approach involves leveraging data from each integration to make the core system more effective. Each integration—and transaction—provides more feedback for Blockaid’s threat analysis models, strengthening its engine.
Finally, Blockaid has assembled the “Seal Team Six” of security. Founders Ido Ben-Natan and Raz Niv served together in the Israel Defense Forces’ Unit 8200, the world’s top breeding ground for cybersecurity founders. Both were cybersecurity R&D team leads within the Office of the Prime Minister. And they’ve pulled from Israel’s top talent to build a 20-strong team of engineers.
The combination of an elite team, outstanding tech, and impressive traction made investing in Blockaid a no-brainer. We’re excited to partner with the team to make crypto safer. If you’re building anything in crypto that interacts with consumers or developers, safety has to be a priority. Talk to Blockaid.
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