Solidus Labs Taps the Forta Network to Enhance Fraud Protections for DeFi Investors

Forta is a real-time detection network for security monitoring of blockchain activity. The decentralized Forta Network scans all transactions and block-by-block state changes, leveraging machine learning to detect threats and anomalies on DeFi, NFTs, bridges, governance and other Web3 systems. When an issue is detected, alerts are sent to subscribers of potential risks, which enables them to take action.

About Solidus Labs

Launched in 2018, Solidus Labs is a leading market integrity and risk monitoring platform for crypto assets. They are actively safeguarding millions of retail and institutional entities around the world by monitoring more than a trillion events per day.

Challenge

True to its vision to enable DeFi’s potential by simplifying and mitigating its risks, Solidus built their Web3 AML solution to combat the rug-pull epidemic impacting millions of DeFi and crypto investors.

The solution enables platforms and traders to verify in real-time that they are not interacting with or receiving funds affiliated with scam tokens and protects against fraud, vital elements for accelerating the industry’s growth and wider adoption.

Web 3-native scams evolve rapidly - new tactics and campaigns are discovered every day. Keeping pace with the innovation of scammers can be an around-the-clock effort and Solidus was interested in a data provider that can enhance its coverage of DeFi scammers. It was important to Solidus that the scam intelligence it consumes is:

- High quality / accurate
- Sufficiently contextualized
- Reflects current scam tactics and campaigns live in the market

Solution

Solidus uses Forta’s Scam Detector to receive real-time intelligence about smart contracts and EOAs involved in scams. The Scam Detector leverages underlying Forta bots, each monitoring on-chain activity for a different threat type (i.e. phishing, address poisoning). 

The Scam Detector monitors for threats in real-time and labels the smart contract and/or EOA involved as a “scammer”. This intelligence is then ingested by Solidus’ Web3 AML solution and used to expand their data set of bad actors. 

Here’s an example of an Ice Phishing alert emitted by the Forta Network:

The Scam Detector identified 0x5731 as an Ethereum address involved in phishing activity. This alert results in 0x5731 receiving a “scammer” label, accessible via Forta’s Graphql API. To ensure Solidus receives new Ethereum scammer labels in near real-time, Solidus queries the Forta API every Ethereum block.

Performance and Impact

To date, Solidus has consumed over 100,000 alerts and labels from the Scam Detector about perpetrators of phishing attacks, address poisoning, scam tokens, NFT wash trading and other threats. This threat intelligence has proven to be a powerful complement to Solidus’ bespoke smart contract monitoring and expanded the scope of their threat coverage.

“Forta helps complement our existing coverage for scam tactics and campaigns, and we’re delighted to work with such a diverse and proactive community of developers committed to derisking DeFi and Web3.” said Ayal Karmi, COO at Solidus Labs.

With this new capability, Solidus enables immediate and accurate detection at scale of a wide and growing array of smart contract scams across the Ethereum ecosystem, from the moment their malicious code is deployed, until their illicit funds reach centralized exchanges, and beyond. It therefore empowers crypto risk and compliance teams to act the moment scams are deployed, to protect users and prevent the acceptance of illicit money flows. The solution also enables entities like decentralized applications and exchanges running on those protocols to flag them for users or limit access to such scams through their user interfaces.