CertiK announced a $37 million Series B funding round co-led by Coatue Management and Shunwei Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures. This is the largest single round of fundraising in the blockchain security space, and adds to CertiK’s list of notable backers, which include IDG Capital, Binance, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Yale University, and others.
Founded in 2018 by professors from Yale University and Columbia University, CertiK is a pioneer in blockchain security, using AI technology to audit and monitor blockchain protocols and smart contracts. Since closing $11 million in financing just under a year ago, CertiK has worked with more than 600 new clients, resulting in profitable revenue in the first half of 2021 that is more than four times full year 2020 revenue. CertiK has quickly grown to become the trusted market leader, with over $70 billion worth of digital assets, including leading projects such as Aave, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Terra, Yearn, and Chiliz.
“Decentralized finance has grown tremendously in the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to financial tools and innovative savings products. With such rapid innovation, security is of the utmost importance,” said Kai Jiang, Partner at Coatue Management, LLC. “We are excited to participate in this funding round and look forward to seeing CertiK strengthen its position as a leader in blockchain security. ”
In addition to code auditing, CertiK offers an advanced platform, Skynet, that leverages on-chain and off-chain data, including social sentiment, privileged governance controls, market volatility, suspicious transactions, and more, to provide real-time information on the security of DeFi applications.
To date, Skynet has monitored over 2 million smart contract addresses and over 2 billion on-chain transactions. Skynet aggregates these signals into individual security scores, publicly ranking projects on the Security Leaderboard to encourage accountability. This free-to-use platform allows cryptocurrency users to perform in-depth analysis of their pet projects, alleviating the centralized role of security auditors.
“The power of blockchain comes down to the power of people,” said Professor Ronghui Gu, co-founder of CertiK. “We are proud to promote transparency in the space by providing the tools and resources, including our official audit reports, so that the community can understand vital security information.”
New York-based CertiK is one of the fastest growing startups in the blockchain security space. The funds will be used to accelerate innovative product development, deepen end-to-end security capabilities, and expand the team with additional world-class talent. Since the first quarter of 2020, the size of the CertiK team has more than doubled, and this growth rate will continue into 2021, creating a highly effective and remote-work-friendly culture with talent located around the world.
