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February 28, 2024
Event Recap
Secure Staking Alliance at ETHDenver 2024
(Re)staking Leaders, Together in One Place
The inaugural event for the Secure Staking Alliance was a resounding success, bringing together key leaders from the (re)staking community to kick off this groundbreaking partnership. The private event, held during ETHDenver 2024, was attended by alliance members and their guests, including leading protocols, validator operators, insurers, and security experts eager to collaborate and make an impact.
The afternoon began with a panel on operational security challenges led by Fraser Brown (Co-founder & CTO at Cubist), highlighting the importance of proactive risk mitigation as the staking ecosystem evolves, and drawing comparisons to Web2's more opaque security landscape. Panelists included Ben Sepanski (VP of Auditing at Veridise), Daniel Tong (Co-founder & Audit Lead at Verilog Solutions), J. Gdanski (Founder & CEO at Evertas), and invited speaker Justine Bone (CPO at Redjack and former CISO at Dow Jones).
This set the tone for lightning talks by experts in cross-chain messaging and crypto insurance, Eric Vreeland (CSO at Polyhedra Network) and Sebastian Banescu (Co-founder & CEO at Chainproof), who shared their perspectives on slashing risk and the fundamental need for robust validator infrastructure.
In conclusion, the final set of panelists included David Tse (Co-founder & CEO of Babylon), Riad Wahby (Co-founder & CEO at Cubist), Soubhik Deb (Head of Protocol Research at EigenLayer), and Stanley Wu (Co-founder & CTO at Ankr), moderated by Edgar Roth (Protocol Specialist at Kiln). They unraveled restaking risk management and the need to equip people with enough risk information to inform their decisions about which novel protocols to engage with.
Attendees had the opportunity to network in person—forging new connections and sparking ad hoc discussions about slashing conditions, what it means for a protocol to be anti-slashable, and more. As the event drew to a close, we felt a growing excitement: security standards and best practices, coming soon!
Interested in joining us next time? Inquire about membership.
Attendees
60
Companies
17
Speakers
12
Sponsors
9
What our members say
“Semantic Layer was honored to sponsor the Secure Staking Alliance event at ETHDenver. We were impressed by the breadth and depth of knowledge of the panelists, and we are glad that the discussion topics covered not just staking security but also new areas such as restaking security. We look forward to future participation in the Secure Staking Alliance to make staking operations more robust."
“The Secure Staking Alliance brings together a unique combination of node operators, liquid (re)staking providers and security providers in the space, who work together sharing their different perspectives to make staking more secure for the Web3 space overall."
“It was thrilling to see so many industry leaders working together to enhance the security of staking and restaking. Secure Staking Alliance members showed that they're committed to doing the hard work it will take to make Web3 safer for everyone. I can't wait to see what's next!"
“I found the ability to have open conversations with some of the leading infrastructure, protocol, and security people to be incredibly valuable. Membership is valuable as it allows us to support a safer more scalable ecosystem for staking infrastructure."
“The Secure Staking Alliance brings the key players in staking (and restaking) to the table with security in mind. It was exciting to discuss the importance of operational security, as well as the broader implications of node operators taking on risks associated to custom on-chain slashing logic. The event was a great step towards building the important standards and operational guidelines crucial for security in this space."
“The Verilog Solutions team wishes to thank the Secure Staking Alliance for organizing the well-planned event. We are delighted to have exchanged ideas with panelists from a diverse set of backgrounds on the topic of operational security. Verilog Solutions is looking forward to collaborating with fellow SSA members to make staking more secure."
Sponsor Spotlight
Supporting our Vision
Babylon is building a Bitcoin staking primitive that makes it possible for Proof-of-Stake chains to leverage Bitcoin's security. Babylon is led by decorated computer scientist Professor David Tse (Co-founder & CEO), who leads a research group at Stanford University and is the recipient of the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, and by the renowned cryptography and security expert Fisher Yu (Co-founder & CTO).
The team’s mission is to extend Bitcoin's unique Proof-of-Work security and decentralization properties to the Proof-of-Stake world and help other networks bootstrap and diversify security at a low cost. Native Bitcoin staking via Babylon's protocol differs from Bitcoin staking where users send their Bitcoins to a multi-sig and are issued synthetic assets for staking on another chain; the differences in trust assumptions and security are massive and can have second and third order effects that affect the entire crypto ecosystem.
With security as their top concern, Babylon’s leadership actively publishes academic papers onProof-of-Stake theory and security in collaboration with leading cryptographers and computer scientists. Babylon is excited to develop security standards as a founding member of the SecureStaking Alliance and push for adoption in the industry so both retail and institutional users of(re)staking protocols and the applications they secure can be confident the technology they are using is safe.
Chainproof is a regulated primary insurance carrier covering non-custodial smart contract, slashing, and other crypto risks. Incubated by Quantstamp, backed by Sompo, and reinsured by the world’s largest traditional reinsurer, Munich Re, Chainproof provides smart contract policies for DeFi, slashing policies for Proof-of-Stake node operators and liquid staking providers, and more.
Their underwriting team takes a security-driven approach to slashing insurance, crafting tailored insurance policies for their node operator clients based on findings from their own staking infrastructure audits.
As one of the core contributors to the Distributed Utilization of Configurations and Knowledge (DUCK) initiative by Lido, Chainproof brings extensive knowledge regarding technical and operational risks and mitigations to the Secure Staking Alliance. They intend to leverage this expertise to contribute to the Secure Staking Alliance’s open security standards , which will not only serve as valuable educational resources for node operators but will streamline insurance processes and reduce the overall risks related to (re)staking.
Cubist is a key management infrastructure company founded by a former fintech COO and professors from Carnegie Mellon and UC San Diego who have published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers broadly related to security. One vertical Cubist serves is (re)staking, where CubeSigner, their hardware-backed key management platform, protects validator keys from insider threats, slashing, front-running, and mistakes.
Today, Cubist works with infrastructure providers and staking protocols including Ankr, Everstake, and Redacted, and has partnered with EigenLayer and Babylon to build anti-slashers for their (re)staking communities.
Building on their decades of experience in secure systems building, cryptography, formal verification, and fraud detection, Cubist’s mission is to make Web3 more approachable, accessible, and safe—and to prove once and for all that the security-performance-convenience trade off is not a fundamental law of nature. The Cubist team is committed to educating our Web3 community about what it means to run secure, anti-slashable validator infrastructure and how validator operators and (re)staking protocols can control existential risk to the ecosystem by explicitly choosing to not cut security corners. Cubist has been spearheading the Secure Staking Alliance since its inception in 2023 and is excited to be collaborating with other industry leaders to make (re)staking safer by design.
Evertas is the world’s first crypto insurance company. Powered by their unique, proprietary crypto-native underwriting process and global policy writing authority, their goal is to make all aspects of crypto safer and more accessible.
Evertas offers the highest per-incident coverage limits in the industry and is the only crypto insurance company backed by Lloyd’s of London, one of the world’s oldest and most trusted insurers. Evertas Professional Services provides expert cyber and physical security assessment, program improvement, and cyber incident response orchestration services.
Evertas is actively working on standards and industry bodies to broadly reduce risk and increase insurability in the staking ecosystem and beyond. The Evertas team completed the first slashing underwriting for Lloyd's of London and has developed risk assessment frameworks for physical security, operational security, and more through their professional services offerings. In addition to offering slashing insurance and a wide range of other crypto policy types, Evertas employs some of the leading risk, insurance, and security experts who are excited to contribute to more robust infrastructure through their involvement in the Secure Staking Alliance.
Veridise is a blockchain security company founded by a team of world-class researchers. They specialize in auditing smart contracts, blockchain implementations, and zero-knowledge-related projects. Their mission is to put state-of-the-art security tools at the fingertips of Web3 developers.
Building on years of academic research, the Veridise team has implemented numerous in-house security analysis tools that augment human intelligence and improve their auditing results, including their OrCa fuzzing tool which automates bug finding during staking-related audits.
Veridise has experience writing specifications for staking-related apps to guide bug discovery and has continuously revealed edge cases and vulnerabilities in staking-related projects that previous auditors have missed, such as flawed fee structures and accounting errors. Having earned the trust of many clients including the Ethereum Foundation, liquid staking protocol Tagus Labs, and Secure Staking Alliance members Ankr and Cubist, Veridise is excited to contribute their auditing expertise and share their learnings with the wider (re)staking community.
Verilog Solutions is a comprehensive Web3 security firm, focusing on protocol security, economic security, and consensus security. Their mission is to enhance the robustness and resilience of protocols within the intricate on-chain environment to protect against a variety of threat actors.
As experts in smart contract security, Verilog Solutions specializes in security audits for liquid staking programs and various liquid staking derivative (LSD) protocols and has delivered staking-as-a-service to reputable institutions including the University of British Columbia.
Their commitment to quality over quantity has garnered trust in the industry, establishing them as the preferred long-term security solution provider for Celo’s native liquid staking program and other well-known protocols. Verilog has published a vast amount of educational content covering topics such as Ethereum solo staking, the security considerations of different liquid staking solutions, and comprehensive analyses of the LSDFi landscape. As a member of the SecureStaking Alliance, the Verilog team’s smart contract security expertise is vital to our mission of establishing open security standards and best practices for the (re)staking community.
