Blockchange Ventures leads $8.2 million seed round for web3 security startup Cube3.ai

The web3 security startup Cube3.ai raised $8.2 million in a seed funding round led by Blockchange Ventures.

Additional participants included Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, ICLUB and TA Ventures. 

Cube3 intends to use the funds to scale the platform in bolstering web3 safety, as well as to educate the community on transaction security risks and their exploitation. 

"The funds will be used to continually improve our existing products, and build new products, to secure builders against an ever-evolving landscape of threats in web3 security," Cube3 founder and CEO Einaras Gravrock told The Block.

"The latter part is key: as our industry continues to grow and mature, the threats will evolve too. Our team of security researchers, white hat hackers and cloud engineers will continue to refine and enhance our machine learning algorithms and consult with our clients to prioritize new features."

Transaction security

Cube3 uses machine learning algorithms to check blockchain-based transactions as they occur. If a malicious transaction is detected, the algorithm sends an alert for the company to deploy a smart contract and prevent the transaction from going through. The startup protects transactions on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum and Polygon, with Avalanche coming later this month.

"As the recent Curve example shows, these exploits can happen to anyone," Gravrock said. "Curve Finance has been around since the start of 2020. It conducted audits and has an active bug bounty program, but the hackers were very thorough in executing this exploit. These incidents highlight the critical need for real-time detection and protection for deployed contracts and protocols alongside existing security layers."

Correction: A previous version of the article misnamed Blockchange Ventures and the surname of Cube3.ai's founder.