Here’s a little story, one that many can likely relate with. Back in 2021 I was one of 50 that received the Solana Global Fellows Scholarship. This program from the Solana Foundation awarded engineers under the age of 24 unique opportunity to fast-track into the foundation, core teams, and investors of the ecosystem. Yes I was considered a cracked engineer already back then.
It’s not super relevant to this story, but adds some context. Also for the record — I am, always have been, and continue to be all about Ethereum since 2017. I also keep an open mind. Think from first principles, see firsthand why people were choosing Solana over Ethereum. Plus, they were offering a free all-inclusive trip to Portugal ;).
Back to the point, I met a person at one of the after-party events. Let’s call him J. I met J through an old friend who was leading a prominent project in the Solana eco. J was a community mod for said prominent project. We were instantly best friends. J’s the type of guy who’s the best combo of genuine energy, funny, intelligent, athletic, humble… it was an immediate bromance. You meet this type of person and immediately can tell, yea this person right here is a good one.
J was out in Europe so I’d see him once in awhile if passing through his city. We also planned a few trips through Europe to travel, hit concerts, etc. Good times.
Anyway, at some point in 2022 me and J are catching up on a call. He mentions, “hey, I lost some money in Drift, it got hacked.” Doesn’t really go into detail, I don’t press, it’s brutal to hear but I’m hoping it wasn’t too bad.
Eventually he says, “It was $80,000”.
Heart-dropping to hear. J’s a firefighter. Type of guy who chooses to give back to his community, risk his life, over making money. $80k for anyone is a devastating amount, but especially here.
Next comes anger really, anger that this can happen. That it’s accepted. Anger that people, real people with beautiful lives who choose to use the products we build and encourage them to are getting robbed of insane amounts. Sure, there’s risks to early technology, but are we really that early at this point? It’s been a decade since the first smart contracts launched.
It’s not [necessarily] Drift’s fault, and I do not mean to demonize them in this story. This can and does literally happen to any project. From small bootstrapped efforts to huge “blue-chip” protocols worth billions. It’s not happening because people are negligent.
At this point in my career (mid-2022) I had already singlehandedly built a DeFi protocol with millions in user assets in it, and some staking contracts that had billions flow through them. I was no stranger to the seriousness and fear of smart contract risk. To launch these products, the amount of diligence I poured into it to make sure there were no mistakes... anyway thankfully they were never exploited. Truthfully despite my efforts, the audits, this and that, it never fully left my conscious that one day I would wake up and see that the worst had come true.
Back to J, well he only told me about his loss because he needed to express why he was stepping back from crypto for a break. That he needed to wrap his mind around it, heal. People’s lives for better or worse revolve around finances. That’s what’s at stake here. J, well he has immensely strong character, the opposite of a victim mindset, and bounced back thankfully.
I’m not helpless, in fact I’m quite capable. Take a look at my track record. From my mixture of sadness, anger, and optimism I started iterating on the earliest ideas of Firewall later that year. I’d say Firewall concretely began in January 2023 alongside my co-founder and close friend Sam. We started to probe the problem and idea maze. How can smart contract exploits be solved? Eventually found some interesting paths and both of us quit our comfy positions.
Funnily I haven’t had the time to travel since I started Firewall (yea, we’re not a team that goes to conferences to blow money and party), so I haven’t seen J in-person and we haven’t had another trip together for a hot minute. A little ironic perhaps, but that’s part of the required sacrifice in exchange for focus on solving a problem nobody has yet. The last time I saw him in-person was on my last trip in the summer of 2023, right before I started writing on some of our ideas for Firewall publicly, and was offered our term sheet for pre-seed fundraising late Summer 2023.
J doesn’t even explicitly know this part of my motivation for Firewall, I struggled with ever telling him because what’s the point if this doesn’t work? There’s no participation trophies. I’m somebody who doesn’t care about anything besides making it happen. That’s who I am.
Well it’s happening, hence this write-up that he will eventually see. It took two, almost three years, but yes, it’s working. I want to be clear; at Firewall we’re on the journey to building safe blockspace. We haven’t achieved full safe blockspace yet. It’s a long path to do so, one that we can clearly see every step mapped out in, but I can confidently say we’ve made progress that can make an incredible difference today.
The underlying fundamental truth is none of what’s being built on any smart contract network matters without safe blockspace. Regulations can change, tradfi can ape in, but how can one build the next financial system on the back of acceptance of theft? Daylight robbery? Let more people be the next J? That’s all the fuel needed for me, and everyone at Firewall. If it is for you too, we welcome you to our cause.
I will next write about how our awesome tech works to stop these sorts of attacks that leave onchain users, like you, me, and J, drained of their money. Shortly thereafter comes “Proof of Tech”.
Stay tuned, thanks for reading!
- Devan
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