Trust is fickle. It takes time to establish but can be lost in a trice. Crypto is ripe with stories of companies that painstakingly built a positive reputation only to ruin it virtually overnight. Names like FTX, Three Arrows Capital, and Celsius need no repeating to the class of 2022. Many hard-working crypto traders and savers were burned by the reckless actions of companies they thought they could trust.
Despite close to $4 billion in crypto being lost due to scams, insolvency, and hacks in 2022, that figure is remarkably just half of that posted in 2021. While the current year has smiled more kindly on cryptocurrency users, 2023 gas had its share of thrills and spills too, most recently with the loss of $120M from cross-chain router Multichain – whose CEO has also been posted missing.
Despite these setbacks, it’s not all bad news for the industry. Thanks to the efforts of dozens of projects working diligently to improve security and user experience, crypto is in better health than ever. While nefarious actors will always remain a threat, current tooling is empowering users to make smarter decisions and enabling protocols to ship more robust applications. The following projects deserve credit for doing their bit to make the industry safer and more deserving of consumer trust.
FairSide
One of the most common scams crypto users experience involves phishing. Sophisticated attackers can trick even experienced users into clicking on malicious links and approving transactions that will drain their wallet. It’s not just tokens such as ETH and USDT that are commonly targeted: NFTs are fair game too, with blue chip collections such as Bored Apes a lucrative prize for phishers.
FairSide is on a mission to put a stop to such behavior by providing personal wallet theft protection. It offers cover for self-custody assets that include tokens, NFTs, and RWAs. One of the cool things about its crypto insurance product is that there’s no KYC requirement unless a claim has to be made. At that point, it’s a small price to pay for obtaining compensation for a wallet-draining attack.
Libertify
What on earth is a crypto seatbelt? It’s a portfolio-saving device that might just prevent you from getting fatally rekt, that’s what. Libertify’s AI-powered risk management tool, which the company has dubbed a crypto seatbelt in saving traders from the market’s violent swings, is a clever piece of software. It’s designed to accommodate human psychology, market volatility, and the discipline demanded to outperform the market versus a simple buy and hold strategy.
Essentially, Libertify removes the emotions from trading, allowing users to make more rational decisions that are conducive to profit maximization. Its crypto app starts with a risk assessment that identifies the user’s trading profile and appetite for risk before devising an appropriate strategy. In an industry awash with tales of beginners who went all in with leverage on markets they barely understand, only to be instantly liquidated, Libertify’s responsible approach to crypto trading is welcome.
AllianceBlock
DeFi infrastructure company AllianceBlock is on a mission to make the industry safer for end users, one product at a time. NexeraID is its attempt at nailing wallet security with the aid of a unique digital token known as a MetaNFT. The wallet allows users to create their own rules concerning how assets in their wallet are handled. They can choose which recovery mechanisms they wish to implement and what privacy level they wish to have in place.
NexeraID also serves as a sovereign identity solution, protecting the user’s privacy while allowing them to verify when connecting to web3 platforms. It’s at the forefront of the movement to mainstream decentralized identifiers (DIDs) as a safer alternative to KYC. In an industry awash with data leaks and plundered identities, that can only be a good thing.
Rabby
There’s a lot of web wallets out there, but few can hold a flame to Rabby when it comes to security. It combines good UX with helpful prompts that demystify transaction signing and alert users to common scams. All of this is achieved while providing a smooth cross-chain experience, allowing users to glide between EVM chains without the need to manually switch RPCs each time.
Useful features that come bundled with Rabby include pre-sign checking that explain exactly what permissions are being granted to a smart contract. There’s also address whitelisting, preventing funds from being sent to the wrong wallet. As an open sourced wallet, Rabby places all of its cards on the table and has been extensively audited. It’s the favored wallet of many experienced and intermediate DeFi users, who have been won over by its security, convenience, and privacy-preserving features.
Cielo
Cielo is a web app and Telegram bot for onchain discovery. It’s used for tracking swaps, NFT mints, perps, lending, and anything else that can be executed onchain. The Cielo web app is commonly used for keeping track of personal wallets, such as receiving alerts when a contractor pays your salary in USDC. It’s also popular with traders who watch what whales are up to and copy them as they ape into new tokens and enter leveraged positions on platforms such as GMX.
One of the most useful features Cielo provides, however, is token tracking. By entering the contract address for a particular token and a minimum swap threshold (e.g. $100,000), users can receive real-time alerts for transactions meeting this criteria. As a result, it’s possible to monitor activity for project tokens and to determine when key holders, including team members, liquidate large positions. It’s also ideal for tracking token unlocks and vesting, providing greater transparency into what’s happening onchain, where, and why.
Feauted image credit: Unsplash
