Time and again, DeFi has proven that conventional “best practices” fall short. Even protocols audited multiple times by top-tier firms have suffered exploits and drained liquidity. A fundamentally different security posture is required.

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Our partnership with Certora introduces a new continuous full-stack approach to security that fits directly within Cork’s development and operations processes.

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Our shared goal is to build an institutional-grade security framework that matches the scale needed for tokenizing risk onchain.

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Certora’s Role in Onchain Security

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Certora is a leading provider of smart-contract assurance, combining formal verification, expert manual audits, and production-grade monitoring into a unified security framework. The company safeguards over $100 billion in onchain assets, securing protocols such as Aave, Lido, and Morpho.

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Its verification engine, the Certora Prover, enables developers to mathematically verify that code performs as intended, helping the most security-conscious protocols in DeFi identify vulnerabilities before deployment and preserve operational integrity after launch.

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A Full-Stack Security Framework

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From now on, Certora will be a fully embedded partner across Cork’s product lifecycle, from system design and formal verification to deployment and operational security. Certora will also provide real-time threat monitoring through the industry-leading services of Hypernative.

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The collaboration includes:

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• Protocol design & software development lifecycle: Certora supports Cork with threat modeling, specification reviews, defining security requirements, and providing secure-by-design guidance.
• Manual audits & review: Deep code reviews and targeted security testing, coordinating community contests as needed.
• Formal verification: Writes and maintains formal verification rules with the Certora Prover, verifying key invariants and pre/post conditions.
• Pre-deploy safety: Enforce release discipline, review deployment plans, assess integration risks, execute testnet validations, and apply evidence-based release gates.
• Monitoring: Certora stands up and tunes onchain threat monitoring (via Hypernative monitoring tools), refines rules for high-signal alerts, and leads suspicious-activity post-mortems.
• Onchain anomaly detection (with Hypernative): Real-time event monitors for abnormal withdrawals, liquidity-pool imbalances, price/oracle deviations, and unusual governance or mint/burn activity, using Hypernative plus custom detectors tuned to Cork.
• Escalation & crisis controls: SLA-backed runbooks that define roles, decision trees, and comms channels, Hypernative alerts route to incident command for rapid triage, containment, and stakeholder updates.
• OpSec: Certora helps Cork conduct external-facing critical asset reviews, implement best-practice hardening, and plan and exercise incident-response procedures.
• Governance safety: Certora enables Cork to review and simulate governance changes before enactment to ensure safe execution.

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Building a Secure Foundation for the Future of Onchain Risk

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This partnership marks the foundation of the Cork Security Framework, a comprehensive program spanning smart contract assurance, key and wallet management, infrastructure operations, continuous monitoring and incident response, third-party risk oversight, and ongoing compliance and improvement cycles.

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Cork is developing programmable risk infrastructure that enables institutions to hedge, underwrite, and price risk across digital assets like stablecoins, staking assets, RWAs, and vaults. Security is foundational to that vision. Partnering with Certora and Hypernative ensures that Cork’s systems not only meet but exceed the security expectations of financial institutions adopting onchain technology.

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