We started Guardrail because we believe existing approaches to web3 security are incomplete. Despite extensive efforts to obtain audits, maintain a bug bounty program, and screen non-compliant entities, web3 protocols have been exploited for $5 Billion over the last 2 years. At its peak, in 2022, we saw 1 hack every 1.3 days.
Digging deeper into the root cause, we learned more than half of all protocols lack any real-time security monitoring or an in-house security researcher. For the subset of security-first teams, existing solutions rely on opportunistic whitehat rescues or complex incident response procedures, both of which attackers demonstrate being able to get around.
For web3 to get into the hands of mainstream users, there cannot be exploits that steal millions of dollars in an instant. To fix this, we need the next generation of security primitives, building on research & data to stop attacks proactively. This is why we started Guardrail.
Our mission is to secure the next generation of the open internet.
We believe combining research-based signals, AI-driven detection, and a proactive response solution will leapfrog the industry in its battle against exploiters.
With Guardrail, teams can detect & prevent a wide range of threats directly on-chain. We constantly analyze every exploit to engineer signals to signatures ready to be consumed. We combine these with AI, using models tuned to each protocol separately and detecting beyond just exploits on-chain. We’re building solutions to prevent exploits at the first instant of its detection, blocking directly on-chain and aiming to introduce an industry standard along with it.
In practice, a team’s contract design, chain choice, and security maturity influence how we work with them, and our beta platform is engineered with flexibility at its core: whether it’s onboarding post-audit recommendations, invariants designed by our in-house researcher or a pre-trained ML exploit model.
This is made possible thanks to a lean, high-performance tech stack built on real-time data streams, continuous threat research, and intense customer focus.
Samridh CEO
Ex-incident research & response lead @ LinkedIn
James CTO
Ex-tech lead @ TwoSigma Quantitative Software Engineering
Chase Founding Eng
Ex-engineer @ AWS & Former Head of Engineering at Web3 social startup
Daniel Founding Sec Eng
Ex-Blockchain Security Innovations & Advanced Capabilities Lead @ DoD red team
In our past lives, we have handled over 200 critical security incidents, built AI prediction & modeling algorithms at Fortune 500 companies, led a 0 to 1 product engineering team within blockchain, and addressed cyber campaigns against nation-state actors.