New security council debuts with Coinbase, Anchorage as founding members

The council, helmed by 10 firms, aims to set standards for security across the blockchain industry

article-image

lefthanderman/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Industry stalwarts including Anchorage Digital, Coinbase, Kraken and Fireblocks have come together to form the Blockchain Security Standards Council.

The council, helmed by 10 firms, aims to set standards for security across the blockchain industry. Halborn, Bastion, Figment, OpenZeppelin, Ribbit Capital and Sentinel Global will also be on the council.

“What’s happening [is] reducing confidence in blockchain technologies, and ultimately, until we can take some action, it’s going to stunt the growth of the industry,” Greg Kohn, the BSSC’s executive director, told Blockworks.

With the pick up of institutional interest, an industry-wide “unified response” could “support” the confidence of potential entrants, Frieder Weichelt, chief information security officer at Anchorage Digital added. 

Right now, however, there isn’t a set of standards…yet. Those will come by the end of this year, Kohn said. 

Read more: What CertiK-Kraken says about crypto exchange security

“We’re starting with our nucleus of founding members to do the foundational work of identifying the standards and audit frameworks that we feel can make measurable progress in addressing the security needs in the industry,

”It’s work to find consensus and to get alignment, but we also have a sense of urgency, and we are trying to get our first deliverables out to the marketplace by the end of this year. We don’t know exactly what the scope and scale of those will be, but we definitely want to move and act.”

By the end of the year, not only will the council be releasing its initial standards, but it’ll also plan to launch an audit scheme to accompany them. 

Weichelt explained that one of the goals could be for every protocol to receive a seal of approval showing it met the council’s standards.

But the council doesn’t plan to stop at standards. Kohn said the council also plans to “engage with regulators and policymakers as well, just to make sure that they understand the work we’re doing, to make sure that we collect their feedback and inputs along the way too. So we want to really be broad and inclusive and really be the trusted resource promoting secure and resilient blockchain.”

While the announcement comes just weeks after Kraken publicized a security issue with auditor CertiK, the firms have been working behind the scenes since last year to develop the council.

But Kraken’s situation with CertiK — which started with Kraken’s Nick Percoco calling out an unnamed auditor for exploiting a bug rather than following the standard practice of reporting it to the bug bounty program — played out in the public town square of X. CertiK defended itself, which then exposed it as the aforementioned auditor and folks were quick to take sides…Kraken’s, for the most part. 

While BCCS was already well underway out of the private eye, the situation highlights one of the goals of BCCS: to create standards for an industry that has relied on white hats and ethics.

Read more from our opinion section: Blockchain needs standards

But, perhaps speaking to Kohn and Weichelt’s earlier points about the need for such councils, BSSC isn’t the only organization focused on security to launch this year. The Crypto Information-Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) launched just a few months ago, with the plan to legitimize information sharing. Earlier this year, Paradigm’s head of security, Samczsun, also launched SEAL-ISAC, which shares a similar goal.

While Crypto ISAC shares a few of the same founding members — Fireblocks, Coinbase, Kraken and Ribbit Capital — the two councils won’t step on each other’s toes. Kohn explained it as sharing “parallel streams.”

“[Crypto ISAC’s] really about threat intelligence and information sharing, and we’re about setting the standards and the audit frameworks. And we see a very deep linkage — where, if they’re seeing consistent threads of incidents and other patterns, they can pass it over to us, and we can build that into our standards work so that we can get into new products, or products can improve their security posture, and so forth,” Kohn said. 

The council plans to “unlock crypto’s potential by bringing industry players together to set the standard for security. Created by the ecosystem for the ecosystem, the BSSC’s security framework will position the crypto industry for growth,” Coinbase’s Adrienne Allen said.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

Unlocked Advisory-min.png

Research

This report distills Blockworks Advisory’s research on incentive programs and their analysis, offering a foundation for designing future initiatives and advancing industry-wide standards. By highlighting key lessons and methodologies, we aim to empower protocols to make informed, data-driven decisions.

article-image

Programmable yield, seamless swaps and decentralized control are the hallmarks of a new stablecoin model

article-image

Crypto is “really exciting,” former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins said in a podcast interview last year

article-image

Bitcoin is now the “seventh most valuable asset in the world by market cap, just behind the likes of Google and Amazon,” GSR’s Brian Rudick said

article-image

Many analysts expected bitcoin to top $100K before year-end, though it’s been on a post-election tear

article-image

Will investors take a 10% lower return to get access to a regulated investment wrapper?

article-image

Brian Armstrong called out the hire of Gurbir Grewal, who had been the SEC’s enforcement division director since 2021