Security Intelligence for the Blockchain
Sentinel Protocol provides a solution to one of the most infamous problems in the crypto-space to this day, its “dark-side”:
Being responsible for your own cryptoassets in the crypto-space is both a truly fulfilling, yet risky endeavour. There are a multitude of threats such as scammers, phishers, and hackers that can jeopardize your stash of cryptocurrencies.
Imagine walking through a deep, eerie jungle where you feel as if you’re being stalked… This is akin to what it feels like as cybercriminals are constantly snooping around in the cryptoworld looking for their next victim.
This is especially true for newer crypto users. Extra precautions must be put in place so that new users to the ecosystem aren’t taken advantage of or lose their shirts causing them to leave the crypto space with a sour taste.
Such a negative outlook could easily harm the adoption of blockchain technology and limit its usefulness to mankind.
Sentinel Protocol is the fair solution to this dilemma.
Sentinel Protocol aims to create a secure, innovative blockchain ecosystem so that everyone may benefit. (…apart from hackers and scammers of course!)
In Summary: A protocol that crypto-lovers may use to protect their cryptoassets.
In order to experience this level of trust and confidence a high security protocol is essential and that’s what Sentinel Protocol is here to build.
The Crypto World needs a hero.
Recent large scale examples include the hacks where Coincheck lost 523 million NEM coins which while they cannot be spent by the perpetrators, the victims have not been completely made whole. Even well known Internet personalities are not completely safe. Most recently, Ian Balina, famous crypto entertainer and investor lost about 2 million dollars of his personal wealth.
Since 2011 at least 36 cryptocurrency exchanges have been hacked resulting in the loss of over 980,000 bitcoins, at today’s rate this equates to over $8 billion USD.
Lack of Laws, Rules, Regulations, and Oversight
As crypto laws, rules, and regulations differ between each country, region, and state, this makes protecting individuals and organizations who transact in the cryptosphere an extremely difficult and convoluted task.
Due to the lack of regulation and the inherent nature of blockchains it is practically impossible for victims to have any stolen tokens returned to them.
Everyone is left to fend for themselves as the autonomous nature of blockchain ensures the onus of responsibility and security rests on the shoulders of each individual that holds crypto.
What makes it worse is that there are countless ways for a crypto hodler to get hacked or scammed. This issue runs rampant throughout the cryptospace as there are no laws, rules, regulations, or even a governing body overwatching the space.
Countless hacks, scams, and frauds have permeated the ICO space.
The problem here isn’t blockchain and crypto that’s underpinning everything, it’s a variable of other factors.
And of course we can’t forget the common denominator here and that is us — humans!
The Non-Cooperative Nature of the Cybersecurity Industry
“It is truly maddening to see examples of bad guys sharing data, tricks, methods and good guys having no effective way of doing it.” — Anton Cuvahkin, VP at Gartner
As it stands today in the cybersecurity industry, service providers are actually disincentivized from sharing trade secrets and knowledge with one another because this is exactly what provides them an edge over competitors in the market.
Cybersecurity companies such as McAfee and Kaspersky would rather see each other fail and allow customers to fall prey to malware and computer viruses so that these customers would then choose to jump ship and use other antivirus programs and services.
Unfortunately the end user and customer are the ones who bear the cost of this discrepant inefficiency in the cybersecurity industry, thankfully with the invention of blockchain technology there’s now a better alternative.
Prevention is better than cure and crypto is certainly no exception, especially when it comes to fraudulent hacks and scams.
[Technology Architecture: Security Intelligence Platform for Blockchain]
This is why Sentinel Protocol proposes a solution to the problems above with a “Security Intelligence Platform Blockchain” that provides a:
The combination of these products and services aims to make the crypto ecosystem safer by lessening the frequency and damage from hacks, scams, and frauds conducted in crypto.
1. Creating legal evidence for stolen cryptocurrency
Sentinel Protocol’s “Threat Reputation Database” (TRDB) stores details including reports of all committed hacks, wallet addresses belonging to hackers, names of phishing websites and more.
By integrating KYC into the database, the TRDB should be able to identify the real-world identities of its users, and this will allow users who are hacked to file reports that are then validated by security experts so these users have evidential proof regarding each incident.
Consequently, returning stolen currencies to their original users becomes a much more practical outcome.
Because of blockchains immutable and traceable nature, the database can track where hacked funds are sent to and blacklist those addresses as they are likely controlled by the hacker.
[Wallets involved in criminal activities would be marked]
When cryptocurrency exchanges integrate with the database via APIs, they will be alerted whenever any blacklisted addresses deposit funds into their exchanges allowing them to seize the funds and return them back to the victim.
2. Providing Oversight Throughout the Cryptosphere
In Sentinel Protocol, there are a group of trusted cyber security experts and institutions who make up a group called “The Sentinels” (Sentinels), these Sentinels:
You can consider Sentinels much like a “neighbourhood watch” group.
Additionally, there is an S-Wallet which is essentially a wallet with an antivirus attached to it that is driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a machine learning (ML) engine. This wallet will help users avoid sending transactions to blacklisted wallets and addresses thus preventing them from losing their crypto.
3. Harvesting the Collective Intelligence of the Crypto Community
Unlike the current cybersecurity industry, it’s possible with blockchain technology to incentivize cooperation and collaboration between security experts and get them to work together.
This is done through an incentive mechanism of Sentinel Protocol called “Sentinel Points” that encourage experts to participate and pitch in together for the greater good of all involved.
With a larger database and subset of information on potential threats, hacks, and scams it is possible to prevent further damage or occurrences.
Through collective intelligence and the wisdom of the crypto crowd, Sentinel Protocol is able to effectively collect hacker’s wallet addresses, malicious URLs, phishing addresses, malware hashes and more.
When the Security Intelligence Platform Blockchain is integrated by crypto exchanges, payment systems, and wallets.
This will greatly disincentivize and minimize the harm hackers may cause by making it difficult for hackers to exchange stolen crypto for money as the stolen cryptocurrencies will be tracked, traced, and hopefully recovered if it falls into the hands of a benevolent user that is connected to the database.
The Sentinel Portal is a knowledge base that is run by security professionals. Just by joining the Sentinel Protocol community the user can greatly benefit from their collective knowledge. Sentinel Protocol will be one of the first dApps built on ICON using it’s Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) engine.
The S-wallet is a AI-driven wallet that analyzes threats including zero-day threats to protect the user from scam URLs, ‘bad actor’ wallet addresses and other bad behavior
It is like having your own personal Fraud Detection System on the ledger that watches out for you like a virtual guard dog.
Distributed Malware Sandboxing (D-Sandbox) is a technique used to run untested or unverified applications in an isolated environment away from the primary application or machines
The D-Sandbox system works off a ticket based system that allows the experts to analyze through their collective knowledge. There are 2 advantages to this approach:
A Simplified Network and Sentinel Protocol Ecosystem
A sample of the Security Process flow is below detailing the system from from a User through the system as its analyzed and cataloged.
The Threat Reputation Database (TRDB) aims to solve two different problems:
Threat Reputation Database (TRDB)
Main Functions of the Threat Reputation Database (TRDB)
Phase 1: Sentinel Protocol of the Cryptocurrency World
Phase 2: Proof of Protection
Phase 3: Self Purification
Phase 4: Self Evolution
Phase 1 for Sentinel Protocol is focused on user adoption and equipping cryptocurrency wallet providers imToken and CoinManager with Sentinel Protocol’s system.
Phase 2 is focused on the regional adoption of Sentinel Protocol in the regions of South Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Phase 3 will then see Sentinel Protocol expand out and aim to target the non crypto market.
Sentinel Protocol’s native cryptocurrency is the Uppsala token.
(Fun fact: Uppsala is the name of an old Viking capital in Sweden where the co-founders of Sentinel Protocol first came up with the idea for the project.)
30% of all UPP revenue along with UPP generated by the inflationary schedule will be reserved as rewards for community contributors. UPP follows an initial inflationary schedule of 3–7%.
Contributors are incentivized to participate early in the ecosystem as early contributions receive a greater share of UPP rewards.
Token Incentive System
Sentinel Protocol also has Sentinel Points (SP) for staking the value of the reputation of a Sentinel. These SPs are obtained by acting as members of The Sentinels and partaking in Proof of Protection (PoP) activities such as:
It’s also possible for individuals to earn SPs by reporting hacking incidents and upvoting helpful Sentinels. These Sentinel Points can be converted into UPP as a reward for user contributions.
Crowdsale Details
Competition: Sentinel Protocol is the first of its kind for cryptosecurity. It therefore has first mover’s advantage and the only comparable project to it is Quantstamp, which is is focused on smart contract auditing so they are not direct competitors.
Hackers: It is possible hackers may be able to circumvent Sentinel Protocol’s system through several avenues:
Network effects: Sentinel Protocol is extremely reliant on partnerships with various exchanges and wallets as well as in the adoption of their S-Wallet by crypto users.
Without the adoption of their security protocol by exchanges, wallets, and payment systems across the crypto ecosystem, perpetrators could use non-integrated platforms to cash out any stolen cryptocurrencies.
Github code: As Sentinel Protocol is being built on ICON, the team is unable to reveal their code as ICON’s code is not yet available for public viewing. Once ICON’s code is available, the code, API, and SDK for Sentinel Protocol will also be made public.
Blockchain developers: The team does not seem to have any blockchain or smart contract development experience however they have several advisors with strong backgrounds and connections within the blockchain space.
Patrick Kim — Founder and CEO
Hae Min (HM) Park — Co-Founder and Head of Operations
John Kirch — Chief Evangelist
Dayeol Lee — Core Developer
Michael Zhou — Head of Threat Intelligence
Narong Chong — Head of Security Operations
Guo Feng — Core Developer
Minwoo Ku — Head of Product
Karly Choi — Head of Marketing
Simon Seojoon Kim — CEO & Partner at Hashed
Jonghyup (JH) Kim — Foundation Council Member at ICON Foundation