Interlock is making crypto security easier, accessible, and rewarding for everyone!
Salutations everyone, and welcome back to yet another article focusing on a very ambitious AZERO ecosystem project that's part of Aleph Zero's EFP! In today's piece, I’ve chosen to cover Interlock, a blockchain network that is building blockchain-based security products designed and specially crafted for users to protect themselves from hacks, scams, and phishing links in the ever-changing world that is DeFi and can be rewarded for sharing their anonymized security data. In this article, I’ll be going over the current problems for cybersecurity in DeFi today, what Interlock has built to combat this, the team behind the project, and so on.
This article will divided into 6 parts: The Problem, The Solution, The Team, The Integrations, Partnerships & Roadmap, The Tokenomics, and The Conclusion, so make sure to begin from the start (The Problem) before moving on to the other parts.
The Problem:
It is without a doubt that 2021 was the biggest and best year for crypto, but it was also the biggest and worst year for crypto scams and hacks alone. It is estimated that over $7 billion worth of crypto was stolen in 2021, not to mention that phishing and social engineering attacks were at their highest point back then and were way too successful, so much so that it left users and investors unsafe and scared to navigate the DeFi landscape and are uncertain about the future of crypto security.
It's notable that web3 technology has advanced way faster than any other web2-security products and couldn’t keep up to adapt to it in time. As most NFTs and crypto wallets gained popularity, a window for new, sophisticated, and malicious attacks was opened, and between 2020 and 2021 alone, cryptocurrency theft rose 516%, to $3.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency. If that wasn’t the worst of it, in 2021, the reported median loss per hack was $1,900, according to a Federal Trade Commission report.
Some of the most common scams ever found in the crypto space are:
Discord hacks and scams
Crypto phishing scams
Social media crypto scams
Crypto rug pulls
Social engineering
Honeypot scams
Crypto wallet hacks
However, it's not all doom and gloom from there. The Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report 2023 provided a beneficial insight into the cryptocurrency scam landscape back in 2022. The key findings that it found were:
The revenue for crypto scams had significantly dropped by 46% in 2022, mostly due to the crypto crash and the bear market. Unfortunately, $5.9 billion in scam revenue was still recorded.
In 2022, the top 10 scams were all notably investment scams, with Hyperverse being the most successful scam to be recorded that year.
Out of every scam known in crypto, romance scams were the most destructive on a per-victim basis in 2022, with an average victim deposit of almost $16,000, nearly triple the next-closest category.
As a hedge against a potential market crash, scammers in 2022 had a preference for stablecoins more than Bitcoin during bull markets.
If you want to learn more about the findings, the blog post can be found here.
However, if crypto is to gain mainstream adoption, these known scams, phishing attacks, and hacks need to be stopped or at least mitigated to the point that anyone can feel safe using and navigating any DeFi application and can rest well knowing that their crypto and NFT’s are safe and sound in their wallets.
Modern problems require modern solutions, and Interlock has modern solutions that can fix these modern problems!
The Solution:
So what’s the solution to fix/mitigate cybercrime in crypto, you may ask? At Interlock, they have built two badass solutions that can help solve and mitigate the cybersecurity problem in crypto, which are:
ThreatSlayer:
ThreatSlayer gives instant protection from browser-based threats and rewards you for sharing your anonymized security data to make the internet a safer place for everyone 😎. How ThreatSlayer works is that when a user visits a website in real-time, it instantly scans it and if it detects anything malicious, it will automatically lock down their browser and prevent them from giving away their credentials, downloading any files that seem off, and visiting dangerous links and phishing sites.
ThreatSlayer: The browser extension that gives the middle finger to cyber criminals everywhere!
With ThreatSlayer, users can be at ease when interacting with DeFi applications and can protect their crypto and NFTs from phishing, scams, and bad downloads. And if you think that’s all to it, there more! Not only can you protect yourself from the harsh cybercrimes that lurk on the internet today, but you can also be rewarded for sharing your security data/threat intel anonymously on ThreatSlayer, and in return, you’ll be rewarded in $ILOCK, Interlocks ERC-20 token that plays a pivotal role in giving users the ability to earn passively while browsing and sharing anonymized security data.
But that also brings up the question ‘What’s under the hood of ThreatSlayer really and how does it do it in real-time?’ By AI, of course! Interlocks ThreatSlayer uses an advanced artificial intelligence, known as a supervised learning system, that’s been trained on a dataset of known good and known bad websites. It uses techniques like feature selection to identify key characteristics of a website that will indicate if it’s malicious or not.
ThreatSlayer is supported on browsers such as Chrome, Brave, Edge, and other Chrome-compatible browsers, with Firefox and mobile support coming soon if you want to download it, visit the last link in the References section of this article to download the ThreatSlayer browser extension.
For the data that it collects, the only thing sent to Interlocks servers is a URL, so they can scan it with their threat-detecting AI any of these URLs are anonymized, so there is no way to connect any user with any URL and it means that no personal information is collected. On top of that, its code is also open-source, so if you want to check it out for yourself, visit the link here.
In addition to all of this, Interlock has recently released a fresh new look to the ThreatSlayer dashboard, which is shown below:
Bouncer:
Bouncer is an open-source Discord bot that helps any Discord server by scanning links protecting the server from malicious sites and instantly neutralizing them. The way Bouncer does this is by querying Interlocks database of known-malicious sites, and if the site is new, they can use their proprietary visual AI to identify 0-day phishing sites.
Not to mention that the setup process only takes just a minute or two and it begins protecting your server instantly. If you want to see the code that makes Bouncer work, here’s the link to its GitHub site, and if you want to incorporate Bouncer into your Discord server, then go chuck a message into Interlocks server and politely ask them about the opportunity.
Bouncer: The Discord bot that protects your Discord server from malicious sites and links!
The Team:
The team at Interlock is made up of a group of like-minded and intelligent individuals who have experience in the cybersecurity and crypto space as well as being founders and alumni of Y Combinator (YC). Here are some of the most prominent figures/founders at Interlock:
Rick Deacon (CEO):
Rick is the CEO and one of the 4 co-founders at Interlock. He's a former cybersecurity researcher and is known to be a startup advisor as well as a YC founder and alumni with a successful exit. He also describes himself as a hacker, car degen, serial and exited entrepreneur, and is the ex-cofounder of Radwood, an organization that celebrates the ‘80s and ‘90s automotive lifestyle. He most notably cofounded Apozy Airlock in 2013 (a precursor to Interlock), which is the browser defense platform that neutralizes web attacks in one click.
If you want to know more about Rick's work, here's his LinkedIn profile.
Erhan Justice (CTO):
Erhan is the CTO and the 2nd co-founder at Interlock and is known to be a former Apple engineer. He’s also a YC founder and a pioneer of browser isolation technology, and he’s a cofounder and CTO of Apozy Airlock, where he worked along with Rick to bring products that bring that enterprise-level security to the rest of the world.
If you want to know more about Erhan's work, here's his LinkedIn profile.
Nick Zivković (PE):
Nick is the PE and the 3rd cofounder at Interlock and describes himself as a pre-acquisition Joylent engineer and an expert at building distributed systems. He also serves as the Product Engineer at Ghost, which is a platform solely focused on professional publishing and creating the best open-source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world. He’s even got his own blog post website, which can be found here.
Andrew Ciaccia (CMO):
Andrew is the CMO and the 4th cofounder at Interlock and is mainly responsible for the marketing efforts of Interlocks products, ThreatSlayer and Bouncer, and some of the relations between Interlock and Aleph Zero. He also describes himself as loving the idea of small-town living, enjoys coffee, and is a racing enthusiast. Fun fact: as of 17th June 2022, he is comically known as the “Marketing Hat Person” and also as of 10th March 2023, he is nicknamed “ANDYBOY”, courtesy of Interlocks lead dev, Nick Zivković.
If you want to know more about Andrew's work, here's his LinkedIn profile.
captain.azero (Community Manager):
captain.azero is one of the 2 community managers over at Interlock and is also known as an official Aleph Zero & AZERO.ID ambassador. He describes himself as an Aleph Zero believer and he mainly writes all of the Interlock Discord server announcements and helps make the ‘Tech Tuesday Updates’, which describes the most recent updates and announcements for Interlock.
However, if you would like to see the rest of the amazing team that’s working hard at Interlock, here is a list of their names (you can find them all in their discord server as well as on Twitter from some of their handles attached here):
Interlock is made from a decentralized global team.
The Integrations, Partnerships & Roadmap:
Interlock has mainly been in the AZERO ecosystem for quite a while and has established a good relationship with Aleph Zero, so much so that they have been granted to be in Aleph Zero’s EFP, where they can get further advisory services from the team, increased funding, access to angel and venture capital investments, and so on.
And, as of writing, they recently announced publicly that they have been mentioned in Aleph Zero’s Signer browser extension, where they recommend new users to use Interlocks ThreatSlayer browser extension to stay safe out there when moving across the DeFi world. They’ve also gone through the rigorous process of having their smart contracts audited and will be launching the full version of ThreatSlayer as well as their $ILOCK token at some point in 2023.
Interlocks roadmap has been split into 3 phases:
Phase 1 (Protect DeFi Consumers): In the 1st phase (the one that Interlock is currently in), they plan to launch their consumer browser extension that lays the foundation for their decentralized security platform. They also plan to launch their $ILOCK token that is central to rewarding users for sharing their anonymized security data from using ThreatSlayer and plan to find bounty hunters that can scour the web for dangerous sites to make their threat intel data even more robust.
Phase 2 (Monetize with INTRprise): In the 2nd phase, Interlock has stated that as their consumer network grows, their value to enterprises grows in sync, and the $ILOCK token demand increases by selling security products to large businesses. They also want to integrate their products into web3 applications like wallets, exchanges, and other web3 projects to prevent fraud and cybercrime and they plan to license Interlock threat intel solutions to Fortune 500 customers that see a shift from centralized to decentralized security.
Phase 3 (Launch the first DeSec platform): In the 3rd and last phase of their roadmap, Interlock plans to release their blockchain-based threat intel and to become the hub for DeFi security. They want to allow anyone to create security dApps on their decentralized security platform, like On-chain and Interchain protection services that protect active-security wallets, consumer security products like DNS, VPN & email, and cross-chain products like KYC, incident response and bug bounties.
They’ve also got a good list of investors that displayed their interest in Interlock, which is shown below:
Interlock is backed by 8 esteemed investors that are big in web3.
The Tokenomics:
Below, you will find the basics and the token distribution scheme for Interlocks token, $ILOCK:
Total Supply of Tokens: 1,000,000,000
TDE Target Date: Oct/2023
Public Sale of Supply (Up to): 5.0%
Public Sale Valuation: 35,000,000
However, if you would like to see the token sale and the token vesting schedule, you can find all of that here.
The Conclusion:
In conclusion, Interlock is a network that is actively building blockchain-based security products for users who want to protect themselves from hacks, phishing links, and scams in DeFi and can be rewarded for sharing their security data anonymously. With their well-designed security products, ThreatSlayer and Bouncer, as well as their innovative and top-notch team, there’s no doubt that they’ll secure themselves as one of the biggest movers in the cybersecurity and crypto space. If you want to learn more about Interlock, then go visit their website, their documentation, their educational blog site, and the Chrome Store to download the ThreatSlayer extension on your browser (all found in the References list below) and join their socials if you haven’t as well!
References:
Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/interlockweb3
Website - https://www.interlock.network/
Documentation - https://docs.interlock.network/
Blog Site - https://www.interlock.network/blogs
ThreatSlayer extension download - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/threatslayer-security-phi/mgcmocglffknmbhhfjihifeldhghihpj
Comments