Blockchain security startup Hypernative bags $9M to prevent crypto hacks

Hypernative, a cryptocurrency security startup that focuses on protecting against hacks, today said that it has raised $9 million in seed funding to help Web3 companies prevent losses from cyberattacks.

The seed round was led by Boldstart Ventures and IBI Tech Fund, with strategic investments from cryptocurrency firms Blockdaemon, Alchemy, and Nexo, as well as CMT Digital and Borderless and a number of angel investors.

The company created a security platform that uses data both on and off blockchains to predict and prevent potential cyberattacks that target economic, governance and community threats in real time. The company calls its first product the “Pre-Cog” platform because of its ability to capitalize on signals before an attack happens using machine learning models to monitor incoming data.

According to the company, the platform has already detected over 764,000 risks and triggered more than 33,000 alerts on 14,000-plus monitored protocols. It uses its platform to allow its customers to react in real time to potential threats that could affect their crypto assets before or even while an attack might be happening to mitigate any damage that might happen.

“We created Hypernative early last year when we saw huge amounts of money getting stolen or phished or scammed in crypto,” said Gal Sagie, chief executive of Hypernative told Techcrunch. “We saw huge gaps between tools that existed and money being invested, so we wanted to create something to help prevent [attacks].”

According to a report from Immunefi, a bug bounty and security services platform for Web3, the crypto industry lost approximately $3.9 billion due to hacks, fraud and scams in 2022 with cyberattacks representing over 95% of that total. Although many of these attacks could have been prevented by proactively fixing vulnerabilities, it’s not always possible to catch every error or bug in the wild.

This is where Hypernative’s Pre-Cog platform steps in order to warn react and prevent attacks before or as they’re happening. It allows security teams at crypto businesses to receive alerts and act rapidly by exporting the alerts to internal application programming interfaces, Slack, email or Telegram so that engineers can know quickly.

The platform is designed for protocols to enhance security beyond auditing and proactive defense, allowing teams to monitor key metrics and anomalies. For asset managers and traders, it also detects risks in portfolios in advance and real time by identifying potential risks before a transaction is initiated, this means that users can be more confident about their activities. Hypernative is easily integrated into both protocol security controls and trading wallet automated trading systems.

“Until now, there are no systems that not only accurately predict and alert on hacks before they happen but also provide actionable advice to stop them,” said Ed Sim, founding partner at Boldstart Ventures. “The opportunity in front of Hypernative is massive as stopping zero-day attacks will go a long way towards rebuilding trust in the crypto ecosystem.”

Hypernative’s ideal clients include hedge funds, exchanges, asset managers, traders and market managers and anyone who interacts with crypto and blockchain protocols who might end up in a position where they need to react quickly to an attack or any other type of incident.

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