Security remains the biggest issue of the crypto space, with crypto hacks, phishing links, and rug-pulls becoming increasingly common. In 2023 alone, the crypto industry saw over $2 billion lost to various security breaches. Rug-pulls, where developers abandon a project and run away with investors’ funds, have also plagued the industry. These scams have eroded trust and caused substantial financial losses.

Forta aims to provide real-time threat detection and security monitoring for blockchain ecosystems in this growing threat landscape. By leveraging advanced technologies like AI and machine learning, Forta aims to safeguard the integrity of decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi protocols, and other blockchain-based platforms, ensuring that users and developers can operate with confidence and peace of mind.

What is Forta Network?

Source: Forta Network website

Forta Network is a decentralized monitoring network designed to detect threats and anomalies in real time. It provides continuous security and operational monitoring for blockchain networks, quickly identifying and addressing any suspicious activity.

Vision Behind Forta Network

Forta Network’s vision is to create a secure and transparent blockchain ecosystem. By leveraging decentralized monitoring, Forta aims to protect blockchain networks from various threats and ensure the integrity and reliability of the entire ecosystem. The goal is to make blockchain technology safer and more trustworthy for all users.

Key Features of Forta Network

• Real-Time Threat Detection: Forta continuously monitors blockchain networks for any signs of threats or anomalies, providing immediate alerts.
• Decentralized Monitoring: The network is maintained by a decentralized network of nodes, ensuring that no single point of failure exists.
• Comprehensive Security Coverage: Forta covers many security threats, from hacks and scams to spam and Sybil attacks.
• Scalability: The network is designed to scale with the growing needs of the blockchain ecosystem, ensuring that it can handle increasing amounts of data and transactions.
• User-Friendly Interface: Forta provides an intuitive interface for users to monitor and manage their security settings easily.

Use Cases of Forta Network

Wallet: Forta Network enhances the security of crypto wallets by monitoring transactions and detecting suspicious activities. It provides real-time alerts for unusual behavior, such as unauthorized access attempts or large, unexpected transfers. This helps wallet users protect their assets and respond quickly to potential threats.

Security and Compliance Tools: Forta offers organizations robust security and compliance tools. These tools help ensure blockchain networks adhere to security standards and regulatory requirements. Forta helps organizations maintain a secure and compliant blockchain environment by continuously monitoring compliance issues and potential vulnerabilities.

DeFi Protocols and Bridges: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols and bridges are often targets for exploits and attacks. Forta Network monitors these protocols to detect and prevent malicious activities. It provides real-time threat intelligence, helping DeFi projects safeguard user funds and maintain trust in their platforms. By monitoring cross-chain bridges, Forta ensures the secure transfer of assets between different blockchain networks.

Investors: Investors can use Forta Network to monitor their investments and detect potential threats. Forta helps investors protect their assets and make informed decisions by providing real-time alerts on suspicious activities. Whether monitoring a specific token or an entire portfolio, Forta offers valuable insights and security for investors in the blockchain space.

Components of Forta Network

Detection Bots

Detection bots are like tiny cameras, built by developers and published on the network. Each bot monitors specific conditions determined by its developer. Some monitor a single condition, such as a multi-sig transaction above a certain amount threshold. Others monitor various factors, like scam activity using advanced heuristics and machine learning models. When a bot detects what it is looking for, it emits an alert. To prevent spam and malicious bots from consuming network resources, developers must stake at least 100 FORT on each detection bot they publish.

Scan Nodes

Scan nodes are servers that provide capacity to the Forta Network. They run detection bots, provide them with blockchain data, and publish any alerts. Anyone can run a scan node by staking the required FORT tokens. Currently, the Forta Network runs scan nodes for EVM blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and BNB Chain. When a new bot is published, it is randomly assigned to one or more scan nodes and begins running shortly thereafter. The scan node collects and publishes any alerts reported by the detection bots. To ensure scan node operators act in the network’s best interest, each scan node must be staked with at least 2,500 FORT.

Forta Network Subscription Tier

General Plan

The General Plan gives users access to over 99% of the bots available on the network. This plan costs 250 FORT per month and includes access to all bots except those designated as Premium Feeds. Users can purchase a subscription by connecting their wallet to the Forta App, with the transaction facilitated by the Unlock Protocol.

Premium Feeds

Premium Feeds offer access to specific feeds that meet certain requirements outlined in FP-6. To be included as a Premium Feed, a feed must undergo approval by the Forta Governance Council or request a community Snapshot vote. Developers individually price Premium Feeds in USDC or FORT. The currently available Premium Feeds include Scam Detector, Spam Detector, Rug Pull Detector, Attack Detector, and Sybil Defender.

Forta Network Threat Intelligence

Attack Detector

Cost: 399 USDC/month

The Attack Detector, developed by the Forta Foundation, identifies smart contract exploits (protocol attacks) in real time before any digital assets are stolen. It achieves this by combining Machine Learning (ML) analysis of newly deployed smart contracts with funding analysis of the deployer address. The Attack Detector focuses on the initial attack stages: Funding and Preparation. By doing so, it can greatly improve its precision rate.

This bot operates with two different thresholds:

• High-Precision Threshold: This threshold represents a risk score focused on high precision, with slightly lower recall. It is designed to minimize false positives, making it ideal for immediate threat detection and response.
• High-Recall Threshold: This threshold is targeted more towards researchers and post-incident response. Precision is slightly reduced to find as many malicious smart contracts as possible, making it useful for comprehensive threat analysis and investigation.

Scam Detector

Cost: 899 USDC/month

The Scam Detector by Forta Foundation is a hierarchical bot that focuses on identifying fraudulent activities within the blockchain ecosystem by listening to alerts from various base bots and generating intelligence about on-chain entities involved in scams. When it observes a scam activity, it presents the alerts to the Scam Detector, which then assigns a scammer label to it.

The Scam Detector processes evidence of scam behavior in four distinct ways:

• Pass-through: If a base bot providing scam evidence is trustworthy enough (i.e., its precision is at least 80%), its alerts pass through the Scam Detector and are turned into labels with minimal oversight.
• ML Logic: Not all base bots are precise enough to qualify as pass-through. Nevertheless, they can still be valuable detection tools. Combining base bots and only emitting a label under certain conditions allows the Scam Detector to flag threats with acceptable precision.
• Manual Detection: Manual detection relies on human-based threat hunting. If the Forta community manually flags a scam, it is captured in a GitHub repository. The Scam Detector picks up a file of indicators from GitHub and creates a label for each indicator. The threat category is appropriately set as part of the label.
• Propagation: Once the Scam Detector has identified a scammer, it flags other entities the scammer associates with and those that resemble the scammer. This is known as “label propagation.”

Token Spam Detector

Cost: 599 USDC/month

The Token Spam Detector bot developed by Artem Kovalchuk identifies spam tokens using advanced algorithms. It analyzes token metadata, compliance with standards, distribution patterns, and creators’ and recipients’ behavior. The bot adjusts its assessment over the token’s lifespan to provide up-to-date evaluations.

The bot uses a modular system to detect both negative and positive indicators. The TokenAnalyzer engine combines these results to determine if a token is spam. If negative indicators are present and positive ones are absent, the bot labels the token as spam and emits an alert. This alert includes details about the token and the evaluation context. Persistent labels are assigned to the token contract, deployer, and related URLs in the Forta GraphQL database. If new information changes the evaluation, the bot updates or removes the spam label accordingly.

Token Sniffer Rug Pull Detector

Cost: 899 USDC/month

The Token Sniffer Rug Pull Detector bot, developed by Solidus Labs identifies rug pulls in token projects by comparing smart contract source code and bytecode against a database of known scam patterns using the Token Sniffer API. It supports the same scam detection functionality as the Token Sniffer website.

The bot listens to the WebSocket stream of newly detected rug pulls from the Token Sniffer API. As new token smart contracts are deployed on-chain or source code is verified on block explorer websites, Token Sniffer searches the contract source code against a database of known scam code patterns, similar to how a virus scanner searches for known virus code patterns. For tokens without verified source code, the bot may alert based on bytecode similarity to known scam contracts. When a rug pull is detected, the bot emits an alert containing information about the token and the type(s) of the scam detected.

Sybil Defender

Cost: 899 USDC/month

The Sybil Defender developed by frwd labs identifies and labels Sybil Attack clusters operating on the application layer of EVM-compatible blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Fantom. It monitors transactions to detect patterns indicating Sybil’s behavior, such as Airdrop Farming, Governance Attacks, and Wash Trading/Market Manipulation.

Features of Sybil Defender

• Real-Time Monitoring: Monitors on-chain transactions in real time.
• Dynamic Clustering: Dynamically updates existing clusters based on incoming activity.
• Heuristic Analysis: Applies heuristics to initially assess transactions for Sybil attack patterns.
• Community Detection: Employs sophisticated algorithms to identify communities.
• Sybil Detection: Filters communities for known Sybil Attack patterns to generate accurate alerts.
• State Persistence: Keeps track of historical data for dynamic clustering and real-time analysis.

General Feeds

Cost: 250 FORT/month

General Feeds provides a broad overview of the security landscape within the blockchain ecosystem. These feeds aggregate data from various detector bots and sources (except the premium feeds), offering users a comprehensive view of potential threats and anomalies. By subscribing to General Feeds, users can stay informed about the latest security developments and trends, helping them to proactively protect their assets and networks.

How to Subscribe to a Bot on Forta Network

Subscribing from the Bot’s Profile Page

Step 1: Search for the detection bot you’d like to receive alerts from and go to its profile page in the Forta App. Make sure to sign in to the App with your wallet. Once on the bot’s profile page, click on the “Subscribe” button at the top right.

Note: You will only see the “Subscribe” button if you have already purchased the corresponding plan (or received a free trial) with the wallet you have signed in with.

Step 2: A new window will appear with a subscription form with the Bot ID pre-filled. You can add custom filters (e.g., only receive alerts related to a specific address) and select your preferred notification channel (Slack, Telegram, Email, Discord, or Webhook).

Step 3: After you’ve made your selections, click “Subscribe.” Depending on how active the bot is, you may start receiving alerts within a few minutes.

Subscribing to a Bot My Subscriptions Tab in the Forta App

Step 1: Navigate to the Forta App and connect your wallet.

Step 2: Click on your wallet address at the top right corner to reveal a dropdown menu, then click on ‘My Subscriptions.’

Step 3: Here you can manage your list of different subscriptions. If this is your first time setting up a subscription, click on the purple ‘Add Subscription’ button and a window will appear.

Step 4: Enter the bots from which you want to receive real-time alerts and select your preferred notification method. Paste the Bot ID and configure your custom filters and notification channel.

Note: The Bot ID can be found on each detection bot’s profile page. Simply click on the Bot ID and it will be copied to the clipboard.

How to Earn Developing on Forta

By default, any newly created detection bot will be automatically assigned to the General Plan. Anyone who wants to access your bot’s data will need to purchase the General Plan and subscribe or integrate with your bot.

1. Create and Deploy a Bot: Develop a detection bot and deploy it on the Forta Network. Visit the “Build on Forta” section to learn more about bot development.

2. Stake Requirement: Ensure your bot has a minimum stake of 100 FORT. This stake is crucial to protect the network from spam and malicious bots.

3. General Plan Inclusion: Once deployed, your bot will be part of the General Plan by default. The revenue you earn depends on the number of subscribers your bot attracts and the total revenue from the General Plan.

$FORT Tokenomics

$FORT the utility token of the Fort network has a total supply of 1,000,000,000 FORT. Here is the breakdown of FORT Token Distribution

• Community - 45.5%
• Backers - 24.5%
• Initial Core Contributors - 20%
• OpenZeppelin - 10%

Token Utility

FORT tokens have several primary uses that are essential for the network’s operation:

• Scanner Pool Staking: Scanner pool owners must deposit FORT tokens on their pools to be discoverable in the network and to provide economic security for their work. Delegators can also stake on a pool with similar withdrawal restrictions.
• Detection Bot Staking: Developers must stake FORT tokens on bots to signal bot quality and provide a Sybil resistance mechanism.
• Payment of Data Fees: Users must pay a monthly fee in FORT to access the General Plan and consume data from the network. Premium feeds can be priced in either FORT or USDC, depending on the feed owner’s decision.
• Governance: FORT holders can participate in governance to shape the evolution of Forta.

Is $FORT a Good Investment?

$FORT has significant potential due to its integral role in the Forta Network. As the network grows and more users and developers join, the demand for $FORT is likely to increase. Here are some key points to consider:

• Utility: $FORT is essential for staking, accessing premium feeds, and participating in governance. This utility drives demand for the token.
• Adoption: As more blockchain projects and users adopt Forta for security monitoring, the usage of $FORT will likely rise.
• Ecosystem Growth: The continuous development and expansion of the Forta Network can positively impact the value of $FORT. New features, partnerships, and integrations can enhance the network’s appeal.
• Competition: The blockchain security space is competitive. Evaluating how Forta Network stands out from its competitors and its ability to maintain a competitive edge is important.

Investing in $FORT requires careful consideration of these factors. Conduct thorough research and consider your risk tolerance before making any investment decisions.

How to buy $FORT on Gate.io

To buy $FORT tokens on Gate.io, follow these steps:

• Visit the Gate.io website and create an account with your email and password.
• Deposit some funds to your Gateio account.
• Trade your funds for $FORT tokens by choosing the FORT/USDT pair, and entering the amount and price.

Useful References

For the latest updates about Forta Network, you can visit:

• The Official Website
• Twitter
• Discord
• Whitepaper
• Forta Blog

Take Action on $FORT

Check out the $FORT price today and start trading your favorite currency pairs:

• FORT/USDT