The venture-capital firm Paradigm, focused on the cryptocurrency industry, has recruited a well-known white-hat hacker under the pseudonym Samczsun. Previously he helped identify various bugs and prevent tens of millions of dollars from landing in the hands of attackers operating in the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector.
Thanks to @dguido and @trailofbits for an amazing summer and the opportunity to work with some of the best security engineers out there. Moving forward, I’ll be joining @paradigm to work alongside @matthuang, @FEhrsam, and the rest of the team.https://t.co/YamqKosK3H
— samczsun (@samczsun) October 9, 2020
Samczsun’s track record includes identifying a vulnerability in the 0x protocol at the end of 2019 in a decentralised exchange, and preventing the theft of 25,000 ETH ($9.6 million at the time) from the Lien Finance project in September of this year.
In the latter case, Samczsun and his team, seeing a high likelihood of unauthorized withdrawal of funds from the smart contract, moved them to safe addresses, thereby preserving investors’ funds.
Until recently, Samczsun also collaborated with Trail of Bits. At Paradigm, whose investment portfolio includes the DeFi platform MakerDAO, the decentralised exchange Uniswap, the Ethereum wallet Argent, the Keep Network project, and the Sia platform, he will be responsible for assessing the security of products for existing and prospective clients.
Paradigm is the brainchild of Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. In April this year the California-based company led a funding round for the cryptocurrency broker Tagomi, through which it raised $12 million.
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