Framework Makes its Largest Single Bet Yet on Immunefi
The bug bounty platform will use the latest fundraise to grow its tech team
Blockworks exclusive art by axel rangel
key takeaways
- Most recently Immunefi facilitated a 400 ETH transaction from Arbitrum to a white hacker
- Investors that participated in the round include Electric Capital, Polygon Ventures and Samsung Next
Immunefi, a Web3 bug bounty platform adopted by prominent projects including MakerDAO, Compound and Chainlink, has secured a $24 million Series A led by Framework Ventures.
Framework Ventures previously led Immunefi’s seed round in May last year, but the latest round will be the largest check the prominent venture capital firm has ever publicly written, Roy Learner, principal at Framework Ventures said in a statement.
“As it stands, Immunefi is by far and away the most widely adopted solution in the crypto security and bug bounties space,” Learner said. “We’re excited to see the company scale and amass talent as more and more key projects onboard into their ecosystem.”
Other investors that participated in the round include Electric Capital, Polygon Ventures and Samsung Next.
Mitchell Amador, co-founder of Immunefi came up with the idea for the company after losing a significant amount of money to smart contract hacks.
“There is a whole world that is enabled by [blockchain] technology and it can not exist without security…we mapped the whole stack and concluded that the most critical piece, which the space will not solve on its own, is the disclosure layer — the 911,” Amador said.
The security company rewards white hat hackers for reviewing blockchain projects and disclosing vulnerabilities — creating monetary incentives for experts to make dapps safer. It currently boasts a community of over 11,000 developers, auditors, CTOs and hackers.
According to Amador, rewards can range from a few thousand dollars to upwards of millions of dollars for a single bug report.
“If you do good for the community, not only will you become rich, but you will also become a hero,” Amador said.
Immunefi has previously facilitated a $10 million bug bounty payment for a vulnerability discovered in the cross-chain messaging solution Wormhole, and a $6 million exposure discovered on a bridge and scaling solution Aurora.
Most recently, Arbitrum, a layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution, paid 400 ETH (almost $550k USD) to a white hat hacker through Immunefi as a reward for uncovering a vulnerability.
The latest fundraise will be going toward growing the Immunefi team, Amador said.
“We need better technical expertise — we cannot keep up with the level of activity,” Amador said. “We just need more people.”
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