DeFi Detectives: Discovering the Secrets of the DeFi Ecosystem
What kind of manpower is required to explore a cryptocurrency500+ DeFi Detectives tracing over 25,000 distinct transaction trails and billions of dollars in cryptocurrency unraveled some of the most critical mysteries of the DeFi ecosystem in just 2 weeks! From the biggest whales in the ecosystem, to its most definitive hacks and controversies, our participants solved mystery after mystery in pursuit of the grand prize.
DeFi Detectives attracted fierce competitors from all walks of life, from experienced blockchain security specialists like winner Peter Kacherginsky, Principal Blockchain Security Engineer at leading exchange Coinbase, to students, bartenders, and active-duty military, the diversity of our participants may be the thing we’re most proud of. We built not only the CISO product, but the challenge itself to create a more transparent blockchain for all, and there’s still much more to come.
“CISO has become an integral part of my everyday exploration of the blockchain. There is no other free product out there that offers the same level of functionality in investigating crypto transactions.” — 2nd Place Winner hacking.believe
DeFi Detectives Winners
In the end, only three could emerge as the winners of the DeFi Detectives Challenge
1st Place ($500 in ETH): iphelix @_iphelix
2nd Place ($200 in ETH): hacking.believe @razzor_tweet
3rd Place ($100 in ETH): kimdroid
Our entire team would like to extend warm congratulations not only to our winners, but to each and every participant who made this event possible!
Closing Thoughts
In a post-challenge interview with contest organizer Steven Yang, Peter Kacherginsky, who himself released a detailed breakdown of his prize-winning investigation following the challenge’s conclusion, noted the challenge’s ability to both educate amateurs, and to ensure that professionals in the field remain sharp and up-to-date with their skills.
“Competitions by AnChain.AI challenge curious novices and seasoned professionals alike to learn new blockchain analytics skills and tools to combat a new breed of computer criminals. I highly recommend anyone interested in blocksec to participate.” — Grand Prize Winner Peter Kacherginsky
The grand prize winner also expressed a desire to see the contest go even more in-depth, pushing the boundaries to the point that, he hoped, participants would be challenged to invent novel solutions and even innovative methods for solving complex problems on the blockchain. Truly the sort of drive one loves to see from a principal blockchain security engineer at one of the world’s leading exchanges!
2nd Prize winner hacking.believe expressed the importance of the challenge’s educational influence, and has already begun to utilize the CISO tool to host challenges and workshops of his own in order to educate his peers in his home country of India. As the first and only widely-available blockchain forensics tool available today, CISO was designed with accessibility in mind, and the entire AnChain.AI team is thrilled to see our mission put into action by our challenge participants.
More To Come
Our second challenge proved to be more than four times the size of the first, and we’re only just getting started. We’re already hard at work, ensuring that next month’s contest is bigger, better, and more in-depth than its predecessors.
The next challenge will feature more ways to play, cover the latest, critical developments on the blockchain, and put the biggest prize pool yet up for grabs.
Will you be ready?
Stay tuned for our next contest on Twitter @AnChainAI or our newsletter at anchain.ai/subscribe
