Drosera closes $3.25M funding round; Can it save Ethereum from hacks and exploits?

Drosera, the Ethereum security protocol aiming to provide robutst security for Ethereum’s decentralized applications (Dapps), announced on Monday the completion of its seed funding round of worth $3.25 million.

Bringing its total funding to $4.75 million now, it secured major investment from Greenfield Capital, followed by Anagram, Paper Ventures, Arrington Capital, UDHC, and Pulsar. It included several angel investors too, viz., Jan Baeriswyl, Luke Hackett, Felix Lutsch, Max from DeFine Logic Labs, Diogo Costa, Yaroslav Pshenitsyn, Peter Kim, Mara Schmidt, Daniel and Abhishek from Swell Labs, Anuj Shankar, and Collin Myers.

Presenting itself as the immune system for Ethereum similar to human body’s antibodies, Drosera aims to use the funding for “pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in protocol security,” as Fernando Reyes (FRR), Founder and CEO of Drosera highlighted. It will use the received funding to further accelerate the development of its next-gen smart contract security and automation technology, Traps – to secure Ethereum users from hacks and exploits. Currently over 25 protocols are committed to its Testnet which includes, Ion Protocol, EtherFi, and Gravita among others.

Drosera’s Traps work through a combination of on-chain and off-chain components, gathering relevant on-chain data to monitor the state of a protocol. Further performing analysis over the collected data, Traps detect anomalies or predefined conditions that may indicate security threats. It then triggers predefined on-chain responses, such as pausing contract functions or alerting operators about the threats.

Drosera has raised $3.25M in a seed round led by @greenfield_cap, bringing our total funding to $4.75M.

This capital will fuel the development of Traps, our next-gen smart contract security and automation technology.https://t.co/NZxRGqiOCT pic.twitter.com/nZCngB2TvK

— Drosera (@DroseraNetwork) February 10, 2025

Why is Ethereum ecosystem hack-prone and vulnerable?

Ethereum is prone to high vulnerabilities due to its smart contract complexity which attracts reentrancy attacks due to logic errors and unchecked external calls. The decentralised applications on Ethereum offer lurky pools of target for hackers, viz., liquidity pools, flash loans, and Oracles – which store billions of dollars in assets. The constant threats to the digital ecosystem of Ethereum can be gauged by the fact that a surprising amount of $1,495,487,055 was lost to hacks, exploits, and malicious actors in the year 2024 alone.

The open-source execution of Ethereum projects along with lack of standardized security audita further compliments its hacking vulnerabilities. Ethereum’s transaction ordering system also allows bots and malicious actors to extract profits by front-running or sandwiching trades, harming users.

In recent years, various DeFi platforms and cross-chain bridges built on Ethereum network have seen significant hacks and breaches, viz., Ronin Network Hack (March 2022), Poly Network Exploit (August 2021), Wormhole Bridge Hack (February 2022), Nomad Bridge Exploit (August 2022).

Will Drosera’s Traps protect Ethereum network from hacks?

Traps are the smart contract technology that Drosera is aiming to use for identifying and neutralizing vulnerabilities on Ethereum.

Traps aim to position itself as the immune system of Ethereum by protecting it in following ways:

• Traps constantly monitor Ethereum’s ecosystem, looking for unusual activity and responding when needed.
• After detection, it neutralizes the threat by blocking malicious transactions, flagging vulnerabilities, or automatically taking some other action before an exploit can cause damage.
• To keep checks on the evolving nature of pathogens in the blockchain world. Traps allow smart contract developers to update their security infrastructure on the fly.

 

Drosera’s smart contract identifies vulnerabilities before deployment, acting as the first line for defense. It is being used by DeFi protocols for real-time protection, by node operators to earn new revenue streams and by security researchers to detect and mitigate exploits. Completely customisable, it allows developers known as Trappers to create and update a Trap on the Drosera network.

Thus, it would be difficult to comment on its execution and implementation parameters as of now. However, Drosera’s efforts can be monitored closely as it further develops Traps and prepares for its upcoming mainnet launch, which was earlier scheduled for Q2 of 2024.

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