Welcome to an insightful conversation with Kennard, the innovative mind behind Sentrii, a groundbreaking tool that's transforming how we safeguard our digital assets in the Web3 universe.
Fresh off their victory at the Crypto.com Hackathon, Kennard shares the journey, challenges, and future vision of Sentrii in tackling the ever-evolving landscape of digital scams.
Interview with Kennard, Winner of the Crypto.com Hackathon with Sentrii
Ishan Pandey: Congratulations on Sentrii's success at the Crypto.com Hackathon! Could you begin by sharing your inspiration behind Sentrii and the journey that led you to address the challenge of preventing digital scams in the Web3 space?
Kennard: We decided to take on the challenge to address digital scams in the Web3 space as several members of our team have fallen victim to phishing scams and signed malicious transactions unknowingly. We found this issue especially widespread, so we wanted to make a material impact to protect ourselves and fellow Web3 adopters.
Ishan Pandey: Sentrii leverages AI to detect fraud early in Web3 environments. Can you elaborate on how your web extension works and the specific technologies involved in scanning website details, smart contracts, and crypto wallets transaction history?
Kennard: We envision Sentrii to be a wallet plugin, like that of a MetaMask Snap. Some technologies involved would include a Machine Learning model that is able to return how likely a website is malicious, by looking through the URL and the HTML components rendered. To assess the risk of smart contracts, we would leverage on the existing web3 data tools available to scan through the smart contract code and also simulate the transaction in a controlled environment, utilising libraries like honeypot.js. Aggregating all the issues detected, we will then issue a trust score for a clear end user experience.
Ishan Pandey: The prevalence of 'verified' badge misuse, phishing through "airdrop" campaigns, and scam tokens promoted by Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are significant challenges. How does Sentrii specifically address these issues, and what makes your solution effective?
Kennard: Sentrii is agnostic to the source of the scam – whether it be from Key Opinion Leaders, ‘verified’ twitter accounts, or anyone else. What Sentrii does is determine the legitimacy of the website and contracts using AI, given the highly predictable and common features that we managed to find in domains and HTML code of many malicious phishing sites.
Ishan Pandey: As Web3 continues to evolve, how do you see the role of AI in maintaining security and trust within this ecosystem? And how does Sentrii fit into this future landscape?
Kennard: We believe that phishing scams will be increasingly prevalent to capture even more new adopters of Web3 as it advances. With growing security concerns in the space, AI will be taking on a pivotal role in Web3. We envision the increased implementation of AI in products like ours, which proactively warns users against interacting with suspicious websites. With more data, AI models can also increase their predictive accuracy via adaptive learning.
Ishan Pandey: Winning the Crypto.com Hackathon is a significant achievement. What are your future plans for Sentrii, and how do you intend to further develop and scale your solution?
Kennard: Winning the hackathon is indeed a significant milestone for Team Sentrii. It's a testament to our commitment and innovative approach towards enhancing security in the Web3 space. Looking forward, we will be working on the further development of our product – such as improving the accuracy and capabilities of our AI model and increasing the user-friendliness of Sentrii. We hope to see our solution being used by the average consumer one day!
Ishan Pandey: Finally, for our audience who are navigating the Web3 space, what advice would you give them to protect themselves from digital scams, and how can they make the best use of tools like Sentrii?
Kennard: While AI tools like Sentrii can be extremely effective in preventing scams, no AI solution is 100% reliable. We would recommend that all users take the first step in protecting themselves. Using knowledge as the first line of defense, users should stay informed and educated on the latest types of scams in the Web3 space, understand their common signs, as well as practice safe online browsing habits. Also, it is important to always remain skeptical about what they invest in – after all, if something is too good to be true, it probably is.
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