Blockchain cybersecurity startup CertiK has raised $37 million in a Series B funding round that was co-led by Coatue Management and Shunwei Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures.
The blockchain and smart-contract security firm has raised $48 million since 2018, with a list of backers that includes Binance, IDG Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Yale University and others.
The strength of the Series B round reflects the explosive growth in decentralized finance (DeFi), which runs on automated smart-contract code and decentralized exchanges, some of which are subject to bugs and hacks.
Founded in 2018 by professors from Yale University and Columbia University, CertiK has provided audits and checking to DeFi-related projects like Aave, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Terra, Yearn and Chiliz.
In addition to auditing code, CertiK’s DeFi-focused “Skynet” analytics service scrutinizes on-chain and off-chain data like social sentiment, privileged governance controls, market volatility and suspicious transactions. To date, Skynet has monitored more than 2 million smart-contract addresses and about 2 billion on-chain transactions, the company said.
“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,” Ronghui Gu, a CertiK co-founder who’s a computer science professor at Columbia, said in a statement.
