Despite being built for resilience, blockchain projects remain vulnerable to blockchain projects, particularly those targeting individual projects and cross-chain bridges.
In recent years, these weak spots have cost the industry billions. Octane, a new San Francisco startup, believes that artificial intelligence will help stop bleeding.
In 2024, hackers stole around $2.2 billion worth of codes through exploits. Just four months after 2025, those numbers are already pretty much in line with emphasising the urgency of better security.
Released in 2023, Octane is led by Giovanni Vignone, a San Francisco-based software engineer and CEO.
“Through my time at Crypto, I’ve seen countless hacks and exploits. There’s a big problem. Over $11 billion was released from the ecosystem,” Vignone said. Decryption. “The team spends between $50,000 and $200,000 a year on protecting the codebase, but the hacks continue to happen.”
With the growth of the cybercrime epidemic targeting blockchain space, Vignone has developed Octane. This is an AI-powered code auditor that helps developers in real time by identifying vulnerabilities when they write.
Octane is integrated directly into the GitHub pipeline and runs continuously when developers write their code. It automatically summarises API pull requests, flags potential vulnerabilities, and helps teams maximize their ability to identify exploits early, fix critical bugs, and address degradation issues.
On Tuesday, Octane announced it had closed a $6.7 million funding round to expand its business. The round was led by Winklevoss Capital and Crypto Investment Firm Archetype, with participants including Druid Ventures, Circle, Gemini, Legion Capital, and Duke Capital Partners.
“The importance of making Crypto applications safer is clear, and Gio and his world-class team have built only a platform to meet this need and help Crypto Devs and Crypto companies ship safer code,” Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said in a statement.
Vignone said Octane was originally designed for Solidity Programming Language and Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility projects. The team plans to expand support for Solana and other blockchains.
Vinone said Octane’s long-term vision goes beyond catching bugs. This reveals how security is embedded in the development process.
“Our goal at Octane is to build a future of security by training AI security engineers (millions of exploits and data points) that specialize in identifying vulnerabilities in every crypto team and helping developers triage them,” he said.
edit Sebastian Sinclair
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