Continuous smart contract security resilience

Blockchain is a booming technology. With a CAGR of 85% over the next seven years, it has become too big an asset to ignore. It's poised to power governments, central banks, payment systems, hospitals, supply chains and much more.

Its global market capitalization will reach $400 billion by the end of 2024, with major institutions such as Blackrock adding crypto-assets to their portfolios in the form of Bitcoin/Ethereum ETH or the Bank of England beginning phase 2 of research into CBDC for cross-border payments.

What used to be called private source code, are now smart contracts that live on the blockchain and enable these new use cases.

With this rapid growth comes a new set of risks, and with money being the primary motivation for adversaries, it's no surprise that hacker interest has grown.

Smart contracts, like any other software, are subject to attacks, and in 2023, $3 billion was hacked by exploiting smart contract vulnerabilities despite 92% of them having gone through a security audit.

The success of these attacks is largely driven by the lack of blockchain security talent in this highly complex field, the lack of solutions capable of adapting to the changing threat landscape, the reliance on expensive third-party security assessments and the lack of accuracy of current tools which are unable to identify advanced vulnerabilities.

To solve this problem, Lucas drew on his doctoral research at UCL, where he laid the foundations for an automated AI-based smart contract vulnerability detection and exploit generation tool.

This research formed the basis of the proposed PoC, which will enable any blockchain-based protocol to ensure the ongoing security of their post-deployment smart contracts against Zero-knowledge proof implementation vulnerabilities, solving the lack of accuracy, automation and scalability of existing solutions with the latest AI models.

Deployed as SaaS, it will provide blockchain developers with a collaborative environment for patching vulnerabilities, regardless of their security experience, solving one of the cybersecurity industry's biggest problems: the shortage of expert talent.