Blockchain security startup CertiK has raised $37 million to innovate its smart contract auditing capabilities to correct blockchain security vulnerabilities.

The Series B funding round, announced Wednesday, was co-led by Coatue Management LLC and Shunwei Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures.

CertiK audits distributed ledger blockchain protocols and smart contracts to provide increased security using artificial intelligence technology in order to reveal risks in code so they can be corrected. As a result, it can prevent potential losses in decentralized finance, smart contracts and other protocols.

“Decentralized finance has grown enormously over the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to innovative financial tools and savings products,” said Kai Jiang, a partner at Coatue Management. “With such rapid innovation, security is of the utmost importance.”

Since being founded in 2018, CertiK has assisted with securing over $70 billion in digital assets, including working with leading projects such as Aave, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Terra, Yearn and Chiliz.

Code correctness applied to smart contracts on the blockchain can prevent costly errors and hacks. According to a report by research company Messari, DeFi protocols have lost more than $284.9 million to hacks and other exploits since 2019. That total represents only about 0.65% of the adjusted total value of the Ethereum-based DeFi market.

CertiK also offers an advanced platform for everyday users called Skynet that uses on-chain and off-chain data to provide real-time monitoring into the security of DeFi applications. It uses social sentiment, privileged governance controls, market volatility, suspicious transactions and more to provide a broad view of application health and security.

Skynet aggregates all of these signals into what CertiK calls a “security score” and publicly ranks projects on its Security Leaderboard in order to foster accountability. The company provides this service to the public to allow crypto users to examine their favorite projects and see how well they stack up on security.

According to CertiK, Skynet has monitored more than 2 million smart contract addresses and more than 2 billion on-chain transactions to date.

The leaderboard includes community alerts about exploits confirmed by CertiK that have hit projects, including which smart contracts were exploited and the dates the event happened. This allows the community to cross-check security information from the project itself about exploits.

“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.”

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