Staff Software Engineer, CertiK

With a rise in financial crime linked to complex new decentralised finance products and the fallout from the collapse of FTX, 2022 was a turbulent year for Web3, with $3.9 billion lost to hacking and fraud. CertiK is making the most of the growing appetite for security by launching a string of new initiatives, including its CertiKShield product offering community-based insurance for crypto-asset holders.

Its lead investors include NEO Global Capital (NGC), a dedicated blockchain investor, and Binance Labs, a spin-off branch of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency. With global crypto markets beginning to recover from a difficult year and security becoming a major priority for most Web3 firms, CertiK will certainly have an outsized role to play in the future of the decentralised Internet.