December 2017 was a different era in the crypto world. BTC had just hit an all-time high, inches under $20k (Dejá Vu, anyone?), only a small handful of tech-heads were familiar with the term DeFi, and there was no unicorn-themed token exchange protocol in sight.

Since then, things have changed a little. Institutions are piling into the crypto space, the TvL locked in DeFi has exceeded $15B, and the number of unique crypto wallets is rising every day. The cryptosphere is booming.

CertiK and the CertiK Foundation are dedicated to the continuing development, and improvement, of security throughout all facets of blockchain and have been since December of 2017 when Professor Zhong Shao, Chair of the Computer Science Department at Yale University, and Professor Ronghui Gu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, alongside a highly skilled team, set out to change the face of security in blockchain.

In the three years since inception, CertiK has conducted 220+ audits, audited 118k+ lines of code, and securing $8.03B of value, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of things slowing down.

The CertiK Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of the CertiK Chain ecosystem, has achieved some enormous feats, including the development, and launch of, the security-first blockchain, CertiK Chain, alongside its native cryptocurrency and fuel of the ecosystem, CTK.

With all this in mind, it’s time to take a look back at the last three years at CertiK, and the CertiK Foundation.

The CertiK Chain Ecosystem

CertiK Chain & CTK

2020 saw the launch of the CertiK Chain Mainnet, an interoperable blockchain set to integrate with other blockchains to ensure an enhanced level of security. With it, came the birth of CTK, the native fuel and crypto asset of the CertiK Chain utilized to power a plethora of services and functions throughout the ecosystem of the chain.

CTK was awarded to participants of the Shentu Incentivized Testnet and was rolled out on Binance Launchpool back in October enabling our community to farm CTK through Binance.

CertiKShield

The novel and innovative solution to one of the issues which arose when Satoshi first put a finger to key and brought about blockchain with its immutable nature; that being the inability to recover lost or stolen crypto fund.

A CertiKShield Pool is a flexible, decentralized pool of CTK which, through the use of on-chain governance, serves to reimburse lost, stolen, or inaccessible crypto assets of any blockchain network. Check our definitive guide out here.

With the likes of $CAKE, $KAVA, $MXX, $HARD, and $WNXM already supported in CertiKShield, we’re beyond excited to continue to onboard projects, and their communities, into CertiKShield and enable them to achieve an enhanced level of peace of mind.

CertiK Security Oracle

The Security Oracle serves to provide on-chain security scores derived from a decentralized network of Security Operators and aggregated into a user-friendly, human-readable, security score.

Check out the Security Oracle in action with Swipe.io here.

QuickScan

Recently, we rolled out QuickScan, a new security tool that serves to expedite smart contract security analysis through the utilization of a number of dynamic and static security primitives.

Our proprietary service, though certainly not a replacement for a conventional CertiK security audit, allows for an enhanced level of confidence in smart contracts at a glance.

If you checked out the Security Oracle with Swipe.io above, you may have noticed the Quicskcan section, too. If you’re yet to take a look, you can find it here.

Innovation

The aforementioned facets of the CertiK Chain ecosystem are not an exhaustive list of the innovative technologies produced by the team at CertiK and the CertiK Foundation.

DeepSea, a secure programming language developed by CertiK, Yale University, and Columbia University, mitigates the security risks of smart contracts prior to deployment.

CertiKOS, a certified, concurrent operating system kernel (the core of any OS) and hypervisor developed at Yale University, receiving international acclaim as the world’s first “hacker-resistant” OS kernel.

CertiK Virtual Machine (CVM),this VM exposes smart contract and blockchain security information, enabling unprecedented ways to access, check, depend on, and even dynamically establish blockchain and smart contract security, all the while being fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine

Highlights

The sheer depth of innovation, achievements, and expansion, throughout both CertiK and the CertiK Foundation, achieved over the past three years is simply too lengthy to cover in as much true detail as we’d like to in a single article.

Let’s take a look at some of our personal highlights below:

Clients

We’re immensely proud to continue to work with giants of the DeFi and wider blockchain space. With innovative solutions to security in the cryptosphere, it’s no wonder why our clients include the likes of:

Aave

One of the largest DeFi platforms enabling collateralized lending. With a current TvL of $1.6B, Aave clients can feel assured in the security of their protocol through our security audit, along with our Security Oracle and QuickScan integration.

Kava

A CertiKShield member with one of the finest codebases that CertiK has seen. Kava offers users high yields on their cryptocurrency with the ability to keep them securely stored on a hardware wallet.

ThorChain

With the aim to promote cross-chain liquidity without the need for pegged or wrapped tokens, coupled with a pseudo-anonymous team, a CertiK security audit enabled, not only verification of the security of the platform, but trust by their community, too.

Community

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it certainly wasn’t built alone.

The community around CertiK, the Foundation, and the CertiK Chain have been nothing less than extraordinary. Whether you’ve participated in the Incentivized Testnet, got involved with our art competition back in 2018, or are simply a member of our Telegram, Discord, or other social media channels; thank you.

For those of you who have run, or are running, a node on the CertiK Chain, please do so in the knowledge that, not only are the team at CertiK HQ incredibly grateful, but that you’re playing a role in sculpting the next generation of security throughout blockchain.

If you haven’t already, feel free to join the team and the community for a chat on Telegram or Discord. Not one for IM? Not to worry, you can grab your CertiK, and CertiK Foundation, news in 280 character snippets over on Twitter.

The Next Three Years

Although the past 1095 days or so have been an incredible ride for everyone involved, our community included, we can’t spend much longer looking back on what we’ve accomplished. Instead, it’s time to look forward.

With what might yet be the most exciting year yet for crypto on the horizon, the team at both CertiK and the CertiK Foundation are determined to continue on our mission to provide provable trust for all throughout every facet of blockchain.

We’ll continue to innovate to produce advanced security solutions that will serve to protect every individual interacting with the cryptosphere; developer or otherwise. All the while, we’ll be iterating on our current product offering to ensure that our clients are as secure as possible and that CertiK Chian, and the wider ecosystem, serves its purpose as an interoperable, security-first, blockchain providing provable trust for all.

Finally, we’d like to say a huge thank you. Thank you to everyone who has supported us on our journey so far.

This is just the beginning, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but we’ve never been more excited to tackle it head-on.