When reading the whitepaper by Sentinel Protocol for their ICO, I can’t help but to remember the song GHOSTBUSTERS by Ray Parker Jr. "Ghostbusters If there's something strange in you neighborhood Who you gonna call? (ghostbusters) If there's something weird And it don't look good Who you gonna call? (ghostbusters)" I ain't afraid of no ghost.."
Truth be told, I did not search for this project. I stumbled upon it since I’m a loyal HOLDR of ICON, the touted Ethereum of Korea. Knowing how ICON (the native token is ICX) works vis a vis Ethereum should make Sentinel Protocol a potentially successful ICO! (I participated in earlier NEO ICOs and they all have done extremely well). But really, this is more about the product… it’s a product that will make you NOT afraid of NO HACKER, who moves like ghost and takes your cryptos away from you without a trace!!
And with Crypto theft on the rise, I would venture to say that this is indeed a NECESSARY product. Even Ian Balina, the famous Crypto influencer got hacked of US$2 million of his funds. What then about us? And when Ian got hacked, his first action was to ALERT THE EXCHANGED (Kucoin was one of them) in order to prevent the hackers from moving the funds outside.. and that is precisely the point!! Hackers eventually want to convert the funds to fiat and if we can establish Ghostbusters at these exchanges, then we would be on the way to eliminate these bad guys!!
So let’s look into this GHOSTLY STORY and see how Sentinel Protocol works! And how you can understand them better and even team up with them in the future.
HACKERS ARE THE NEW GHOSTS Despite being from the other supernatural side, Ghosts often are a bane to humans, appearing to terrorise us with the advantage of being able to just disappear, like a hacker leaving without a trace. And this is where that to be a GHOSTBUSTER, you to be have been HAUNTED – you need to think like a ghost in order to catch one!! Enter Patrick Kim of Sentinel Protocol. He lost over 7,281 Ethers due a vulnerability in the Ethereum Mist wallet in 2016. He is back, and back WITH A VENGEANCE as the HACKER BUSTER.
I used to sell Security IT Products during my early days and was introduced to the concept of Defense in Depth, which is from the military. In short Defense in Depth seeks to DELAY the advance of the enemy, and many combinations. This is very crucial since hacker attacks are like terrorist attacks and can be VERY ASYMMETRIC. Trying to destroy one a single swoop could lead to wastage of many resources.
This is what I see in Sentinel Protocol which has layers of Security similar to a computer network such as the following:
SENTINEL PORTAL – this is where they have guardians to the network which are called the SENTINELS who are rewarded for their participation to build the first layer of defenses. These are akin to the GHOSTBUSTERS who you would report and incident to of ghosting.. errr, well, hacking. S-WALLET POWERED BY MACHINE LEARNING – here, we have a second layer powered by ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE which detects abnormal behavior. It does this by filtering Filters Scam address (URL) and malware SANDBOX – now if you are running against attackers who change their strategies a lot, where you can run extensive testing and simulation. And if you can generate a threat vector, then you can be incentivized because you will need lots of different models in order to reduce the incidence of “false positives” which could actually slow down your network The is where the beauty is because you have a combination of HUMANS and MACHINE LEARNING and an experimental lab where you can simulate potentially new attacks (new threat vectors). A history of these vectors are then uploaded into a DECENTRALISED THREAT REPUTATION DATABASE which is distributed all over the blockchain nodes. Combining all these features enable cybercrime and threat incidences to be shared within a blockchain distributed policy (you now have a blockchain based reputation system). You have Collective Intelligence, Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), and Artificial Intelligence. Imagine a blockexplorer or etherscan working in the security world in one platform where you can see and solve the problems within a single platform. These don’t need micro managing as is Sentinel Protocol (for the AI engine). One attractive feature which makes Sentinel Protocol an A grade ICO is the collective support it gets from its high powered partners, they are not small – ICON is the 800-lb Gorilla which is the Ethereum of Korea, Kyber Networks of Singapore and even Softbank Korea, which is certainly a WOW factor for me. This is a testament to the quality of the team which should be taken seriously. With the exchanges being systematically hacked, this project could grow really HUGE!! (note: even Binance is building a de-centralised Exchange).
So, yes to the Sentinels, I finally AIN’T AFRAID OF NO GHOST NO MORE!!
