Binance Labs Led Investment in CertiK, Contributed “Millions” to Making Blockchains Bug-free
Binance Labs, the incubation and investment arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily volume, Binance, has divulged its position as lead investor in blockchain and smart contract verification startup CertiK—months after revealing the project as one of its premiere investments.
Announced in a press release by New York-based CertiK, Oct. 8, Binance Labs has contributed “millions” in a nod to the project’s mathematical approach to proving blockchain ecosystems are hacker-resistant and bug-free. Ella Zhang, CEO of the investment group stated:
“CertiK mathematically validates the security of smart contracts – which is a critical pain point we are facing in the blockchain ecosystem – bypassing the limitations of manual detection.”
The move will shine a light on the depth of Binance’s commitment to CertiK, with the exchange’s emblematic founder, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, having quietly lauded the project’s AutoScan bug-detection engine in a September tweet:
Very cool. https://t.co/PtfjveezuZ
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) September 1, 2018
Big Bugs to Kill
A decidedly academic affair, the CertiK team appears to have been drawn out from the halls of Ivy League into the apparently bug-riddled world of blockchain. The project cites founding members from Yale and Columbia University — scholars, who, according to Yale, have spent the last few decades tackling mathematical software proofs.
Now citing catastrophic botches such as the DAO’s immemorial, 3.6 million Ether, hard-fork-inducing smart contract hack, CertiK has built on its legacy of creating the “world’s first hacker-resistant, concurrent operating system” to claim the only solution that mathematically certifies the absence of bugs in all components of a blockchain ecosystem, including dApps and smart contracts.
CertiK’s COO, Daryl Hok, paid homage to the project’s academic ancestry of the project, emphasizing that the investment would help CertiK bring home the bacon. He stated:
“We’re really excited to be supported by one of the world’s top exchanges, says Daryl Hok, With published research that begun in academia, we believe that Binance Labs is the perfect partner to accelerate the impact of our unique technology into the broader blockchain space.”