Ethereum is the most secure blockchain ecosystem. This is the result of 10 years of progress and iteration across every level of Ethereum’s technology stack, from wallet UX to developer tooling to consensus protocol security.
But being the most secure platform in the crypto ecosystem isn’t enough. Ethereum’s ambition is far greater: to be civilization-scale infrastructure that securely underpins the internet and global economy, surpassing the safety and trustworthiness of the world’s legacy systems.
Today we are announcing the Trillion Dollar Security initiative, an ecosystem-wide effort to upgrade Ethereum’s security to help bring the world onchain.
Reaching “Trillion Dollar security” means a world where:
- Billions of individuals are each comfortable storing more than $1000 onchain, collectively amounting to trillions of dollars secured on Ethereum.
- Companies, institutions or governments are comfortable storing more than 1 trillion dollars of value inside a single contract or application.
What will the 1TS project do?
This initiative has three components:
(1) Mapping the landscape of security strengths and attack vectors across every domain and layer of Ethereum’s technology stack. We will gather input from across the ecosystem and synthesize this into a security overview report that will help us identify focus areas.
This mapping will span a wide range of domains, including: UX (blind signing, frontend security), wallet security (firmware issues, supply chain attacks), smart contract security (developer tooling, standard libraries), infrastructure (cloud security, dependency management), consensus and protocol security (DOS risks, stake centralization), internet infra (DNS level censorship), and more.
(2) Executing on improvements in focus areas identified during the mapping overview. We will work closely with the ecosystem to implement near-term high priority fixes and allocate investments for longer term improvement projects.
(3) Communicating more effectively about Ethereum’s security. Users of all kinds should be able to understand, utilize, and benefit from Ethereum’s strong security foundation. Anyone should be able to evaluate Ethereum’s security standards and compare these against other blockchains and legacy systems.
Who will contribute to this project?
At the Ethereum Foundation, the project will be driven by Fredrik Svantes (Protocol Security Lead) and Josh Stark (EF management team) as the initial co-chairs of the project.
They will be supported by three ecosystem stewards who will help guide the project and provide input and advice.
samczsun
samczsun is the founder of the Security Alliance (SEAL) and works with leading technologists and researchers to secure the future of crypto. He got his start in crypto through responsibly disclosing dozens of critical vulnerabilities across various protocols and publishing technical writeups. He is also a security advisor at Paradigm.
Mehdi Zerouali
Mehdi is a co-founder & director of Sigma Prime, a leading blockchain security and research company. Mehdi has been in the offensive information security industry for over 15 years and has performed hundreds of security assessments targeting critical infrastructure and applications. With Sigma Prime, Mehdi leads a team of security engineers dedicated to the Blockchain space, helping prominent projects secure their decentralized protocols.
Zach Obront
Zach is a co-founder of Etherealize, where he is building products to move global financial infrastructure onto Ethereum. He spearheaded the initial build of OP Succinct, the first full ZK validity proof version of the OP stack. Zach has been working in web3 security since 2022, leading audit contests, working on private audits, and uncovering critical bugs to help secure the ecosystem.
We want your help!
Achieving Trillion Dollar Security is only possible with the support of the broad Ethereum ecosystem.
We want your perspective and input on where Ethereum’s security needs to improve. Whether you are an individual user or a security auditing firm, we want to hear from you!
If you or your organization is interested in contributing input, please do so through this form where we are collecting responses to help inform our work.
If you are interested in sharing further information, we’re keen to have more in-depth discussions with stakeholders across the ecosystem. You can reach us at trilliondollarsecurity@ethereum.org
Update: Following this blog’s publication, a Security Challenges Overview report was released as part of the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative.