Binance and Oasis Labs Launch Alliance to Combat Crypto Fraud and Hacks

Changpeng-Zhao2
27 August 2020

Leading crypto exchange Binance is launching the CryptoSafe Alliance platform in partnership with Oasis Labs, a data privacy company, to prevent and analyze cryptocurrency fraud.

  • Calling it the first industry group of its kind, the exchange said the CryptoSafe Alliance will begin by offering post-mortem analyses of any hack or breach of contributing members, allowing members to have a better understanding of how to avoid similar attacks in the future.
  • The alliance, which will be open to exchanges, blockchain protocols, cybersecurity experts and compliance firms, will maintain a so-called "blacklist" of member-submitted digital addresses.
  • According to a statement announcing the alliance, addresses will be blacklisted when they are found to be complicit in criminal activity such as money laundering, fraud, extortion or theft. Members will then be able to integrate the blacklist into their services to protect their own users.
  • “The CryptoSafe Platform is essentially a comprehensive database of wallet addresses, endpoint fingerprints and other related information as well as analysis tools and algorithms that support the fight against malicious behaviors including hacks,” the Binance security team said in a statement to CoinDesk.
  • Eventually, the platform will also provide proactive real-time fraud analysis for alliance members. Doing so will make it easier for members to combat cryptocurrency hacks and thefts and, in doing so, generally improve the standard for the industry, according to the statement.
  • “By forging closer ties between exchanges, security and compliance firms, and the crypto community, the CryptoSafe Alliance aims to strengthen the industry’s long-term defense against malicious behavior,” said Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
  • Oasis Labs’ decentralized, privacy-preserving software will be the primary infrastructure provider.
  • “By using a combination of privacy-preserving technologies and a decentralized blockchain, the Oasis Network is able to ensure that the CryptoSafe Platform is trustless,” said Vishwanath Raman, Privacy Architect at Oasis Labs. “Each exchange that is part of the alliance can upload threat intelligence without it ever being shared with other partners.”
  • To do this, all transactions, from uploading data through running queries, are maintained in an immutable append-only ledger with confidentiality so that each member, or their designated auditors, can audit only their transactions, Raman said.
  • The platform supports the Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRX and EOS blockchains. Additional blockchain protocols and networks will be added later in the year.
  • Fee structure is decided on a case-by-case basis. Members that meet the alliance requirements of contributing and consuming data will be able to join without any fees. Members that consume data without contributing will be charged, with exact details on fees to be released at a later date.

See also: Researchers Find Flaws in Security Protocols Developed by Major Crypto Exchanges