MakerDAO using Forta for security and operational monitoring

Forta is excited to announce that MakerDAO, one of the largest and most trusted DeFi protocols, is using Forta to monitor critical protocol operations.

The Maker Protocol is the set of smart contracts that make it possible to generate Dai. The Protocol was the first decentralized finance (DeFi) application to earn significant adoption and remains one of the largest decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain. All Dai is backed by a surplus of collateral that has been locked into audited and publicly viewable Ethereum smart contracts.

Given how decentralized Maker is from a governance and operations standpoint, they were keen to also have a decentralized monitoring system. Decentralized solutions like Forta can eliminate single points of failure and vendor lock-in. Maker was also keen to enable their community to have access to real-time security and health information, and encourage them to actively participate in the monitoring function. 

The Maker TechOps Core Unit, as well as representatives from Immunefi, Maker’s external security advisor, worked closely with Nethermind to develop and implement Forta monitoring. Today, protocol components being monitored by Forta include:

- Governance Module: detection bots are monitoring hat addresses that are unknown, have been changed, or have less than the MKR threshold in approvals; and lift events involving unknown addresses.
- Oracle Security Module: detection bots are monitoring the cadence of price updates for collateral types, and significant deviations in price.
- Emergency Shutdown Module: detection bots are monitoring “join” events involving 2 or more MKR, and ESM “fire” events.

Maker is also in the process of implementing additional L2 monitoring on Forta, including monitoring invariants in Dai supply between L1 and Optimism/Arbitrum, the Dai price across chains, and various wormhole events including minting, debt ceiling utilization, and slow withdrawals. 

“We’re excited to be working with Forta. The more eyes on Maker’s critical infrastructure the better. Especially with Forta's amazing decentralized solution,” said @eskp, a Maker TechOps Core Unit member.

You can also find and subscribe to Maker’s alerts and more using the Forta App.

You can learn more about MakerDAO and Dai by visiting https://makerdao.com

About Forta

Incubated by OpenZeppelin, Forta is the first decentralized network delivering real-time intelligence on the security and health of Web3 core infrastructure and dApps. Protocols, DAOs, investors and individuals can use Forta to receive real time insights on security, financial, operational and governance related events on L1s, L2s and sidechains. 

Learn more about Forta by visiting forta.org or reading the documentation at docs.forta.network.