Grants Proposal #004 - Forta Snap

Champion(s): Christian Montoya

Project Name: Forta Snap

Category: Transactions, Security

Project Description / Executive Summary:

Overview of Forta

Incubated by OpenZeppelin and backed by a16z, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures and others, Forta is a real-time detection network for security & operational monitoring of blockchain activity. In other words, a decentralized camera and alarm system for Web3. Forta launched in October of 2021, and is being used by some of the largest DeFi projects to monitor critical aspects of their protocols, including Lido, Compound, Aave, MakerDAO, Balancer, dYdX and UMA.

Forta detects threats and anomalies on DeFi, NFT, governance, bridges and other Web3 systems in real-time. Given timely and relevant alerts about the security and health of owned or dependent systems, protocols and investors can react quickly to neutralize threats and prevent or minimize loss of funds. Now, the Forta community is focused on leveraging the same detection capabilities of Forta to protect end users from phishing attacks, scams, etc.

Summary

Crypto Twitter is flooded by stories of users getting scammed, drained, and phished for large sums of money. In the first half of 2022, scammers and hackers stole over $2B via phishing and other exploits. At the same time, Web3 security is still in its infancy, and the majority of the focus to date is around protecting DeFi protocols with audits, formal verification and bug bounties.

However, this security stack does little to protect the end user who uses their wallet every day to interact with dApps and other counterparties. Many common attacks like phishing, unlimited token approvals, and scams target the everyday user who has little protection.

The most effective and easiest way to protect end users is for wallet providers to natively include security features inside of their products. Our goal is to build end user protection security features, leveraging the detection capabilities of Forta bots, into Metamask to prevent users from falling victim to scams and phishing attacks. We will initially build a Snap to prove out the use case, effectiveness, and experience.

Project Goals:

When the project succeeds, Metamask users will have enhanced (on-chain based) scam and phishing prevention in their wallet experience that augments the existing (URL based) protection in Metamask today. The project team will be responsible for developing the Snap. The Metamask team will be responsible for assessing the security of the Forta Snap.

Target Milestones:

Forta snap development is a single step, and will follow the standard software development lifecycle (design, development, test, deploy)

Development is expected to take ~ 8 weeks, including design, development and testing.

About Team:

Christian Seifert Head of Research at the Forta Foundation Previously Director of Applied Research at Microsoft https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-seifert-phd-6080b51/

Steven Landers Technical Fellow at the Forta Foundation Previously Director of Development and Lead Architect at OpenZeppelin https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenglanders/

Funding Request and Budget Breakdown :

The Forta Foundation is requesting $24,000, to be allocated exclusively to development costs over the 8-wk period.

Resources: 0.5 FTE (over 8 weeks) Estimated Hours: 160 Hourly Rate: $150/hr Funding Requested: $24,000

Other Information / Relevant Links / Supporting Documents:

www.forta.org

https://forta.org/blog/zengo-and-forta-add-in-wallet-monitoring-to-protect-end-users/