LayerZero Labs, the staff behind the LayerZero cross-chain messaging protocol, has teamed up with bug bounty and safety providers platform Immunefi to launch a $15 million bug bounty for its protocol, Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero, advised forexcryptozone solely.
The Bug Bounty alliance will supply a most reward of $15 million for every new vulnerability found by hackers. The platform has introduced bug bounties prior to now, however none are that massive, Pellegrino stated.
The $15 million most reward additionally makes it the biggest bug bounty program within the crypto ecosystem, surpassing MakerDAO’s $10 million program.
“We find the money for to pay a variety of bonuses. Protocol safety comes earlier than anything,” Pellegrino stated. The reward cash will come from LayerZero Labs’ fairness entity, Pellegrino added.
Immunefi claims to supply safety providers for over $60 billion in person funds throughout crypto-based tasks and companies like Polygon, Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, MakerDAO, and Optimism. To this point, it has paid out over $75 million in bug bounty rewards.
Final month, LayerZero raised $120 million in a Collection B spherical at a $3 billion valuation. In contrast to internet 2.0 messaging platforms resembling WhatsApp and Telegram, its messaging protocol permits customers to ship several types of messages throughout blockchains, resembling cross-chain interactions, eliminating the necessity for middlemen. LayerZero connects over 30 mainnet blockchains, together with two non-Ethereum digital machines (EVMs) and Aptos.
Over the previous yr, the crypto ecosystem has misplaced an estimated $9.33 trillion to exploits, hacks and scams, with just below $1 trillion recovered, in response to the database. REKT from De.Fi.
Greater than $3.9 billion was “misplaced” final yr, in response to Immunefi’s Crypto Losses 2022 report. Whereas that may look like an enormous quantity of capital to lose sight of, it is 51.2% lower than in 2021, when greater than $8 billion was stolen, in response to the report.
In 2022, nearly all of losses, or $3.77 billion, had been because of hacks in 134 particular incidents. About $175 million was misplaced to fraud in 34 incidents throughout the identical interval.
Launched in March 2022, LayerZero has seen greater than $15 billion in transaction quantity in its 14 months to this point, Pellegrino stated. Since its inception, the messaging protocol has “by no means had a safety or hacking exploit,” he added.
LayerZero spent about $5 million on auditing final yr to make sure its safety, and it goals to comply with a course of to make sure the safety of its code earlier than launch, Pellegrino stated.
Regardless that the market is registering fewer losses, the variety of losses continues to be large. In March, hackers stole round $200 million from crypto lending platform Euler Finance. Though that feels like some huge cash – and it’s – it’s solely the twenty sixth largest crypto heist of all time, in response to information from De.Fi.
“For anybody constructing in house, security needs to be the highest precedence,” Pellegrino stated. “If you do not have good safety, you’ll find yourself being hacked.”