LayerZero Labs, the staff behind cross-chain messaging protocol LayerZero, has partnered with bug bounty and safety companies platform Immunefi to launch a $15 million bug bounty for its protocol, Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero, completely advised TechCrunch.
The bug bounty alliance will supply a most reward of $15 million for every new vulnerability discovered by white hat hackers. The platform has introduced bug bounties previously, however none so giant, Pellegrino mentioned.
The $15 million most reward additionally makes this the most important bug bounty program within the crypto ecosystem, surpassing MakerDAO’s $10 million program.
“We come up with the money for to pay out loads of bounties. The safety of the protocol comes earlier than anything,” Pellegrino mentioned. The reward cash will come from the fairness entity of LayerZero Labs, Pellegrino added.
Immunefi says it offers safety companies for greater than $60 billion in person funds throughout crypto-based initiatives and firms like Polygon, Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, MakerDAO and Optimism. It has paid out over $75 million in rewards for bug bounties up to now.
Final month, LayerZero raised $120 million in a Sequence B spherical at a $3 billion valuation. Not like Internet 2.0 messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, its messaging protocol lets customers ship several types of messages between blockchains, like cross-chain interactions, eliminating the necessity for intermediaries. LayerZero connects over 30 mainnet blockchains, together with two non-Ethereum Digital Machines (EVMs) and Aptos.
Previously 12 months, the crypto ecosystem misplaced about $9.33 trillion to exploits, hacks and scams, with a little bit beneath $1 trillion recovered, in response to De.Fi’s REKT database.
Over $3.9 billion was “lost” final 12 months, in response to Immunefi’s Crypto Losses 2022 report. Whereas that may appear to be a whopping quantity of capital to lose observe of, it’s 51.2% lower than 2021, when over $8 billion was stolen, the report discovered.
In 2022, nearly all of losses, or $3.77 billion, had been as a result of hacks throughout 134 particular incidents. About $175 million was misplaced to fraud throughout 34 incidents in the identical timeframe.
Launched in March 2022, LayerZero has seen transaction quantity of over $15 billion in its 14 months thus far, Pellegrino mentioned. Since its inception, the messaging protocol has “by no means had a safety exploit or hack,” he added.
LayerZero spent about $5 million on auditing final 12 months to make sure its safety, and it goals to comply with a course of to make sure its code’s safety earlier than it’s launched, Pellegrino mentioned.
Despite the fact that the market sees fewer losses, the numbers being misplaced are nonetheless huge. In March, hackers stole around $200 million from crypto lending platform Euler Finance. Whereas this appears like some huge cash — and it’s — it’s solely the Twenty sixth-largest crypto theft ever, De.Fi information confirmed.
“For anybody constructing within the area, safety ought to be the precedence above all else,” Pellegrino mentioned. “In the event you don’t have good safety, finally you’ll be hacked.”
