Web3 Builders Announces $7M Raise to Build NFTs and Smart Contract Security Tool

Quick take:

• Web3 Builders has raised $7 million to accelerate the development of its security platform for smart contracts and NFTs.
• TrustCheck is a scam prevention tool for smart contracts, NFTs and crypto transactions. 
• The seed round attracted participation from OpenSea Ventures, Road Capital and others.

Web3 Builders Inc., a crypto security startup has raised $7 million in a funding round backed by Road Capital and OpenSea Ventures, the investment arm of the world’s largest NFT marketplace OpenSea. Other investors in the round included Sparkle Ventures, Picus Capital, ACME, TTV, G20, Global Founders Capital and Haven Ventures.

Web3 Builders’ leadership team includes co-founder Nicholas Horelik, CEO Riccardo Pellegrini and Chief Technology Officer for Web3, Henry Katz.

An NFT is a digital representation of an artwork, JPEG, collectible, music track, virtual/physical merchandise, or video clip stored on the blockchain.

The company announced a blockchain security tool TrustCheck, which prevent those transacting in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), smart contracts and crypto from being exposed to scam. TrustCheck is a web extension currently available for Chrome-based operating systems. The extension assesses the risk of a transaction by running checks against the company’s machine-learning engine.

Crypto security has become a focal point of several web3 startups amid the increased cases of platform exploits through scams. Hackers have already stolen more than $1.3 billion in 2022 from crypto companies including the Axie Infinity heist, which saw $625 million stolen by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus.

Web3 Builders is joining a growing list of crypto security providers that include crypto analytics and fraud detection company Chainalysis, which extended its service to cover NFTs after raising $170 million.

Last month, the bug bounty platform Immunefi raised $24 million in a Series A round to secure web3 platforms with bounties and payouts, cushioning them from the adverse effects of crypto exploits. The company uses white-hat hackers and developers to review code for any potential bugs that could be exploited by black-hat hackers.

Web3 Builders plans to use the funds to expand its team and develop new artificial intelligence and machine learning methods protocols.

In May, Doppel another NFT fraud detection platform raised $5 million to enhance its web3 security capabilities. A month later, NFT fraud prevention startup Tovera acquired the NFT fraud detection project SnifflesNFT for an undisclosed fee to take down NFTs minted without permission.

Web3 Builders’  security product TrustCheck works differently from any of the tools out there. According to the announcement, the tool leverages data from over a dozen sources that cover tens of thousands of reported and validated scams, and hundreds of millions of addresses, to analyze potential risks to a transaction.

“What’s become clear is that a lot of the time, the way most people are getting scammed is a direct message on Twitter or Discord that takes them to a phishing site that leads them to a wallet drainer,” Web3 Builders CEO Ricky Pellegrini told CoinDesk.

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