Fireblocks, an enterprise platform for securing digital assets in transit, announced today its launch out of stealth mode with $16 million in Series A funding from Cyberstarts, Tenaya Capital, Eight Roads (the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International), Swisscom Ventures and MState.
Fireblocks’ customers, which count some of the largest institutional digital asset trading operators like Galaxy Digital, Genesis Global Trading, and more, use the platform to safeguard the digital assets in its portfolio as it is moved across exchanges, OTCs, counterparties, hot wallets, and custodians.
More than $3B in digital assets were stolen by hackers over the last 18 months due to private key theft, spoofing, and compromised credentials. Recently, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world lost $40MM in bitcoin due to an insecure hot wallet and compromised API credentials. Founded by Michael Shaulov and Pavel Berengoltz, whose mobile security company Lacoon Mobile Security was acquired by Check Point, and Idan Ofrat, the VP R&D of C4 Security which was acquired by Elbit Systems, Fireblocks aims to eliminate the root cause of digital asset hacks and scams.
“While blockchain based assets by themselves are cryptographically secure, moving digital assets is a nightmare. After interviewing over 100 institutional customers, including hedge funds, broker-dealers, exchanges, and banks, we concluded that the current process is slow and highly susceptible to cyber attacks and human errors. We built a platform that secures the process and simplifies the movement of funds into one or two steps.”
– Michael Shaulov, CEO and Co-Founder of Fireblocks
Joined by top security engineers from Symantec, Trusteer, IBM security, and leading cryptography advisor, Prof. Ran Canetti, Fireblocks is introducing the first patent-pending Secure Transfer Environment that works with a Hot Vault system. Together, it enables digital assets to be easily transitioned from any storage solution to be primed for immediate settlement and transfer on the blockchain.
“Sitting as part of the broader Fidelity group, we realize that cybersecurity is crucial in the adoption of blockchain and digital assets. We are excited to support the Fireblocks team as it develops a cutting edge technology that will help propel digital assets trading to the next level of evolution, enabling huge improvements in operational efficiencies, security, and trust.”
– Davor Hebel, Partner, Head of Eight Roads Ventures Europe
“Securing blockchain based assets is one of the key challenges in modern cybersecurity warfare, and it requires heterogeneous expertise in mathematics, system level programming and years of hands-on cybersecurity experience. The Cyberstarts team is thrilled to partner with Michael, Idan & Pavel, who amazed us with their technology breakthrough to eliminate risk from digital assets management.”
– Gili Raanan, Partner at Cyberstarts and Sequoia Capital