CertiK raises $37M to accelerate the development of innovative products and expand the team
CertiK announced a $37M 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, adding to CertiK’s list of notable backers, which include IDG Capital, Binance, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Yale University, and others.
Founded in 2018 by professors of Yale University and Columbia University, CertiK is a pioneer in blockchain security, utilizing AI technology to audit and monitor blockchain protocols and smart contracts. Since closing $11M in funding just under a year ago, CertiK has worked with over 600 new clients, resulting in profitable H1 2021 revenues that have more than quadrupled the revenue of the full 2020 year. CertiK has rapidly grown to become the trusted market leader, with over $70 billion worth of digital asset value, including leading projects such as Aave, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Terra, Yearn, and Chiliz.
“Decentralized finance has grown enormously over the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to innovative financial tools and savings products. With such rapid innovation, security is of the utmost importance,” said Kai Jiang, a partner at Coatue Management, L.L.C. “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 insights into the security of DeFi applications.
To date, Skynet has monitored over 2 million smart contract addresses and more than 2 billion on-chain transactions. Skynet aggregates these signals into individual security scores, publicly ranking projects on the Security Leaderboard to foster accountability. This free-to-use platform enables crypto users to perform in-depth analysis on their favorite projects, alleviating the centralized role of security auditors.
“The power of blockchain boils down to the power of the people,” said CertiK co-founder Professor Ronghui Gu. “We’re proud to advance transparency in the space by providing the tools and resources – including our official audit reports – so the community can make sense of vital security information.”
NYC-based CertiK is one of the fastest-growing startups in the blockchain security space. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of innovative products, deepen end-to-end security capabilities, and expand the team with additional world-class talent. Since Q1 2020, CertiK’s team size has more than doubled, and this rate of growth will continue in 2021, creating a highly effective, remote-friendly culture with talent located worldwide.