Why we invested in Hypernative
By Barmak Meftah, Co-founder and General Partner, Ballistic Ventures
Web3 represents a more open, decentralized and secure internet. But as any security professional will tell you, the reality is that it’s still the Wild West.
Billions of dollars have been lost to exploits, phishing, protocol hacks, and fraud. On top of that, trust, which is arguably the single most important factor in any technological shift, is still the biggest blocker to mass adoption. Without security, there is no trust. Without trust, Web3 cannot scale.
Solving that challenge requires security that moves at the pace of the threats: fast, intelligent, and built specifically for the dynamic nature of Web3. That’s why we’re excited to announce our investment in Hypernative.
Hypernative isn’t just another next-gen threat detection platform. It’s a real-time, AI-powered risk prevention engine purpose-built for the speed, complexity, and nuance of Web3. While many teams are playing catch-up, Hypernative is working minutes, even blocks, ahead to detect and stop threats before they do damage.
Why Hypernative?
From our earliest conversations with the co-founders, CEO Gal Sagie and CTO Dan Caspi, it was clear they weren’t thinking incrementally. They were building a foundational layer of Web3 security. Their approach combines deep threat detection capabilities, onchain and offchain telemetry, AI-based modeling, and an ability to simulate outcomes before transactions are finalized. That last part is critical in Web3, where a blind signature can mean the loss of millions of dollars.
Here’s what made Hypernative stand out to us:
- Real-time response: Hypernative doesn’t just alert, it acts. Their platform gives users critical minutes to mitigate risk before an exploit executes and, in many nefarious cases, a transaction occurs.
- Expansive coverage: With support for 60+ chains and 300+ risk types, they offer the most complete threat detection surface we’ve seen in the space.
- AI at its core: Their system blends machine learning, graph-based detection, heuristics, and simulations to provide highly accurate, proactive protection. It’s a deeply engineered platform that learns and adapts with each new attack vector and anomaly.
- Trusted by the ecosystem: Over 200 leading protocols, chains, exchanges, and funds already rely on Hypernative to protect more than $100 billion in assets. That level of adoption is a strong validation of the team’s vision, execution, and market fit. We are also now seeing very large, traditional financial services companies managing large crypto asset portfolios, and Hypernative is enjoying adoption by that market as well.
The market opportunity for Hypernative
With over $2.2 billion in confirmed losses in 2024, last year was a brutal year for Web3 security. And 2025 is already on track to surpass that, following the massive $1.4 billion Bybit hack in February.
This kind of systemic risk doesn’t just hurt individual projects, it damages the credibility of the entire space. Institutional adoption, already underway through stablecoins and tokenized assets, will slow to a crawl unless we shore up the security fundamentals. That’s why Hypernative is a must.
Hypernative’s platform secures everything from individual wallet transactions to protocol-level operations. With their newly launched Guardian product, users are now protected against blind signing, which is a massive leap forward in consumer-grade security for crypto-native environments.
Investing in the future of secure Web3
At Ballistic, we back founders who see around corners; those who are building not just to solve today’s problems, but to secure tomorrow’s infrastructure. Hypernative is doing exactly that – and we believe they will become an essential component of the Web3 security stack. We’re especially grateful to our good friend Ed Sim at boldstart for the introduction that put Hypernative onto our radar.
This $40 million Series B round, which we co-led alongside our friends at Ten Eleven Ventures, will help the company accelerate AI capabilities, expand fraud and wallet protection, and grow their already impressive team of experts.
At the end of the day, Web3 won’t go mainstream because of hype. It will go mainstream because it’s safe. And with Hypernative, it finally can be.