CertiK, YZi Labs Partner to Support AI and Web3-Focused Initiatives
Security is still lagging in crypto and Web3. CertiK's latest updates push that conversation forward with a mix of funding, tooling, and hard lessons from real incidents.
Partnership: Security Baked In at Day One
CertiK has partnered with YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) to support founders in the EASY Residency Global Startup Incubation Program. The focus: Web3, AI, and biotech builders.
- $1M auditing grant for incubated teams
- Formal Verification, Skynet Boosting, and AI scanning
- YZi Labs will connect projects with CertiK and push awareness of these tools
The intent is simple: treat security like structural engineering-so founders can build with confidence, not guesswork. As CertiK's leadership noted, partnerships like this raise the bar for ecosystem safety and make early-stage security a default, not an afterthought.
Truebit Exploit: What Went Wrong
On January 8, 2026, attackers hit Truebit with an integer overflow in the getPurchasePrice() function. They minted 240M TRU for 0 ETH, then swapped the tokens for roughly $26.6M in ETH.
The core issue: unchecked arithmetic. Large inputs wrapped the value to zero, allowing free token creation. Funds were split and some were moved through Tornado Cash. This wasn't novel-it was avoidable. Pricing and mint logic must be guarded against edge cases that push variables past their limits.
- Use Solidity 0.8+ checked arithmetic and property-based tests for pricing paths (Solidity overflow changes)
- Fuzz inputs around boundaries (max uint, near-zero, extreme slippage)
- Apply Formal Verification for invariants like "no free mint" and "price integrity"
- Isolate financial math, review it separately, and monitor on-chain with alerts
Data Leaks Fuel Scams: Lessons from the Ledger Incident
A breach via payment provider Global-e exposed Ledger customer names, addresses, emails, and order details. Seed phrases and payment info were not impacted. But the fallout is social engineering: that's where most people get burned.
- Expect AI deepfakes mimicking executives
- "Quishing" via malicious QR codes and fake mobile apps
- Physical threats ("wrench attacks") using leaked addresses
Practical moves that help:
- Use email aliases/masking for crypto services
- Switch from SMS to app-based 2FA; add a hardware key (e.g., YubiKey)
- Verify every transaction on the device screen, not just the app UI
- Treat urgency as a red flag. Legit providers won't ask for seed phrases-ever
What This Means for Builders, Investors, and Users
- Founders: Budget security from day zero. Get an audit plan, set test thresholds, and wire monitoring into your deployment checklist
- Developers: Guard math and pricing logic first. Use checked arithmetic, fuzz tests, assertions, and formal methods on core flows
- Investors: Ask for security artifacts-threat models, audits, incident response plans, and alerting
- Users: Treat personal data like assets on-chain. Your inbox and device are attack surfaces
CertiK's updates show the full picture: fund security, study failures, and teach practical defense. Threats are getting more specialized. The projects that last will be the ones that assume failure modes exist-and engineer them out before mainnet.
Further Learning
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