Forta - Threat and Operational Monitoring for Synthetix

Username

Andy Beal - Ecosystem Lead @ Forta. Email is andy@forta.org

Grant Description

Forta and Nethermind (development partner) will define and develop suite of bots that run on the Forta network and monitor the security and health of the Synthetix protocol.

Overview

Incubated by OpenZeppelin and backed by a16z, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase and others, Forta is a community-managed alarm system for Web3. Forta launched in October 2021, and is being used by some of the largest DeFi projects to monitor critical aspects of their protocols, including Lido, Compound, MakerDAO, Aave, dYdX, Instadapp and Liquity. Forta gives these core teams and their communities visibility into the real-time health and security of these systems.

The Forta Network has two main components - bots and nodes. Bots are pieces of logic (scripts) written by a developer that look for certain transaction characteristics or state changes. Nodes run bots against each mined block of transactions. When bots detect a specific condition or event, the network emits a public alert. Forta currently has nodes scanning Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum and Fantom. Other EVM-compatible chains will be added regularly, and Forta will eventually be extended to support non-EVM compatible networks (i.e. Solana).

Under this grant, Forta and Nethermind will develop a suite of bots that run on the Forta Network and monitor the security and health of Synthetix. These bots generate real-time alerts that can be pushed to the Synthetix core team and community via Slack, Telegram, email, Discord, etc.

As an example, here is how MakerDAO is using Forta to monitor critical components of the system - https://app.forta.network/agents/maker.

Value to Synthetix

Investing in improved real-time monitoring capabilities provides the team/community with better data about the health and security of the system. It also has the indirect benefit of making the system more secure, because the more/better alerts you have, the more effectively the team can react to an issue/exploit)

Project Implementation Plan

While the exact timeline is dependent on the final agreed upon scope, integrations with other protocols are typically 2-3 weeks, and involve the following steps:

• Research in-scope smart contracts and confirm alerts details (severity level, desired fields)
• Develop bots
• Test bots
• Share bot code for Synthetix review and testing (as necessary)
• Assist with bot publishing and alert integration

Additional Information

Success is fairly binary for the scope of this grant: (a) did we mutually agree on a set of bots that Synthetix believes will make the protocol safer/more secure, and (b) were those bots developed, do they work, and were they published on the Forta Network?

Funding Request

$15-20k. This amount is an estimated range based on previous work for other large DeFi protocols like dYdX, Balancer, and MakerDAO. Once we have agreed on the specific scope, we can provide a final number. All funds will be used to pay for the research and development time required to develop the monitoring bots running on the Forta network.