San Francisco / California, USA, March 7, 2024, Chainwire
Firewall secures funding for its bulletproof smart contract network from North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC.
Firewall, a blockchain infrastructure startup, announced a $3.7 million pre-seed round co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Hack VC. Firewall transforms the usability of smart contract technology through an innovative final consensus mechanism that eliminates smart contract abuse.
Previously the first and sixth employees of Staked, a staking company acquired by Kraken in a groundbreaking cryptocurrency deal, Firewall’s founders have helped revitalize the proof-of-stake and decentralized finance era over the past six years. In that time, the founders have served institutional clients with an infrastructure that processes billions of dollars, and now they are using their experience to solve what is most often perceived as the final major obstacle to the full adoption of digital assets in the traditional financial system.
“Firewalls are building the safety rails to enable the next generation of the Internet for everyday people.” Devan Puhar, co-founder of Firewall. “Today, billions of dollars are being stolen from users through irreversible transactions that can be classified as theft. There are similarities between the current state of cryptocurrency networks and the early Internet in that they lack the necessary security infrastructure. Our focus is not on minor improvements. Rather, we bring about a paradigm shift necessary for the usefulness of blockchain. We designed the solution based on first principles and created programmable finality. Basically, we make exploits a concept of the past.”
Like digital versions of traditional network firewalls, firewall technology introduces “programmable finality.” This extends rollups to use programmable transaction finalization rules, which are inserted before later steps and act as automated checkpoints to block harmful transactions when data is finalized by a DA layer such as EigenDA or Celestia. The founders consider the firewall to be a part of every smart contract network, acting as a built-in security system that intelligently protects against threats.
“The firewall uses real-time algorithms to pre-filter attacks to ensure they are not included in the block.” share sam mitchell, co-founder of Firewall. “We then use programmable finality to automatically recover from any exploits that bypass pre-filter checks. Detection at this stage may involve AI models or social consensus, which may take longer.” Mitchell emphasized that institutions managing trillions of dollars of assets are interested in the benefits of smart contracts, but they need a secure environment to deploy capital. “Providing convenience for institutional customers to use smart contracts will be a pivotal point for widespread adoption of digital assets.”
In addition to the founders, the core team is credited with successfully pioneering the use of AI in cryptographic threat detection at OpenZeppelin and Forta, and is set to revolutionize the field with Firewall’s comprehensive security approach. The startup’s initial focus is on the rollup ecosystem and it prides itself on building non-custodial and trustless solutions. The funding will help us expand the team and create a community for the “EVM Firewall”. Long-term plans include developing an orchestration mechanism to integrate the social layer directly into the firewall.
“We believe the main barrier to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies is the current security paradigm, where a single bug can result in the complete loss of user funds,” said Travis Scher, Managing Partner at North Island Ventures. Firewall’s solutions can prevent these losses, and we are thrilled to support such an important company from the beginning.”
The funding round was co-led by North Island Ventures, Breyer Capital and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital and angels including Staked’s Tim Ogilvie, Synthetix’s Kain Warwick and Jordan Momtazi, and Anchorage’s Nathan McCauley and Yaoqi Jia. AltLayer.
“Firewalls are making blockchain more secure for users, developers, and institutions,” said Ted Breyer of Breyer Capital. “We see this catalyzing a new era of smart contract utility, and we are excited to support the team.”
With the growing global adoption of cryptocurrencies and the regulatory spotlight fueled by the BTC ETF and the anticipated ETH ETF, it is time for cryptocurrency networks to become bulletproof. Trillions of dollars remain on the sidelines for fear of using smart contracts. The “programmable finality” of the firewall, which effectively neutralizes exploits, provides the security assurances needed to unlock these assets, paving the way for cryptocurrencies to revolutionize the global financial system.
firewall information
Firewall is dedicated to making smart contract technology safe for everyday use by eliminating smart contract abuse. Their solution is similar to a strong network firewall applied to modular blockchain ecosystems.
contact
co-founder
Devan Puhar
firewall
devan@usefirewall.com
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