source:blowfish.xyz
Over the years, crypto has seen lots of funding flow into blockchain infrastructures and services with very little focus on consumer level security.
We've talked long and hard on chain-level security, typically debates on what consensus algorithms are the most effective for decentralized governance.
To those who actually pay attention to these things and search deeper than surface reports and popular opinions, it's a great deal of evidence that most consensus mechanisms are great for chain-level security.
Quite simply, some are just more resource-efficient than others. That said, when it comes to satisfying the cause of its creation, it's never truly about the consensus algorithm but initial token supply, especially in the case of token-based governance systems.
It doesn't matter if it's DPoS or PoS, if the initial token drop is gotten wrong, it screws everything up. Of a surety, overtime, things could get straightened up, but at what cost?
This has been the grand focus of web3 development, and we seem to still be allocating significant resources to this with the unending release of scaling solutions and research into optimizing the chain-layer without sacrificing security.
Don't get me wrong, chain-level security is paramount to the success of this ecosystem, but we've focused solely on this, leaving consumers exposed to security threats on the social layer.
Blowfish Web3 Security For Web3 Wallets and Custodians
Blowfish is a firewall technology designed to protect web3 users from malicious transactions and software in real time.
The is a product designed specifically for web3 companies to integrate in their platforms and not individual users unless of course if individuals run personal wallet softwares developed in-house.
From public data, the team behind the project hail from top companies in tech including blockchain, cybersecurity, and machine learning engineers from Meta, Trail of Bits, 0x Labs, and MakerDAO.
What's impressive is that since its initial integration with Phantom wallet — a popular Solana wallet software, it's prevented over 11,000 wallet draining transactions.
The software currently protects over $10 billion in crypto assets and prevents over 2.8 million scams.
Essentially, Blowfish issues warnings to users when they are about to interact with malicious transactions, softwares or websites. Think about all the unofficial scam sites made to look exactly like popular project websites, if users attempt to connect their wallet through a wallet software that has Blowfish integrated, they'll receive risk warnings citing that the webpage is untrustworthy.
Blowfish’s development has been funded by Paradigm, Dragonfly, Phantom and others, initially in 2022 with $11.8 million raised.
That being said, in November, the project was acquired by Phantom.
Web3 users need all the help they can get, especially new onboards. The average user cannot understand whatever shit transactions they sign. It would interest you to know that many don't even read the details of what they sign.
But surely, seeing a bold warning prompt will make any sane individual rethink signing random transactions.
The economic value of services like this cannot be overstated. With 2.8 million scams already prevented, we are frankly looking at billions in asset value being protected, which essentially helps the crypto economy remain healthy.
We need more services like Blowfish, certainly there could be others out there that I'm not familiar with but Blowfish is the first I'm coming in contact with. The social layer which includes frontends that users interact with needs more focused developments.
Consumers are the ultimate market if we want to experience mass adoption and really see our ecosystem grow in value flow and revenue generation so it's a no brainer to ensure their protection.