Sentinel Protocol Q&A with CryptoLingo
Chief Evangelist John Kirch Interview
During Korea Blockchain Week, John Kirch, the chief evangelist of Sentinel Protocol, has interviewed with CryptoLingo, a leading blockchain consultancy and digital media agency based in London, New York, and Seoul. While the entire video can be watched here, we’ve broken down some of the important points below. Some answers have been modified for better clarity.
Q: Who is Sentinel Protocol?
We are an ecosystem of advanced technologies and security experts whom we call the “Sentinels” for providing a wide range of solutions to help individuals and organizations protect their crypto assets. We are the world’s first crowdsourced threat intelligence platform built on the blockchain. Our platform is designed to deliver an effective solution for cybersecurity problems and to protect cryptocurrency owners from hacks, scams, and frauds. By doing this, we can establish a decentralized, yet safely connected cryptocurrency world.
Q: Tell us about the team behind Sentinel Protocol.
We have an incredible team composed of members with backgrounds in companies like Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Fortinet, Darktrace, F5 Networks, and other well established corporations. In addition to those team members, we have people like Dayeol Lee, who was the 3rd place winner at the DEFCON worldwide competition. We have other similarly talented security experts on our team. Because of them and their knowledge, experience, and capabilities, we are extremely excited and confident that we will be able to deliver our solution to the market.
Q: How does the TRDB serve as the backbone of Sentinel Protocol?
Our Threat Reputation Database (TRDB) is a decentralized repository of collective crowdsourced threat intelligence information sourced from individuals, security experts, and organizations located around the world in real time. We use this information to enhance our ability to provide effective cybersecurity.
Therefore, our TRDB shares validated information with crypto exchanges, wallets, payment systems, and other organizations through our APIs and Uppward (previously S-Wallet). This enables organizations to obtain the latest information in real time. It will also help organizations identify hacks, scams, fraud, phishing, malware, and so forth. As a result, they can be proactive in protecting their customers and systems against different types of threats that cause incredible damage. Not only can organizations help their users but they can also help themselves.
Q. Explain Sentinel Protocol’s incentive system and the difference between UPP tokens and Sentinel Points?
When creating a crowdsourced threat intelligence platform, it is very important that we get effective and legitimate information. Our mission is to motivate people to do good by incentivizing good behavior, honorable conduct, and valuable contributions. What we are doing is rewarding these people with Sentinel Points, which indicate reputation and trustworthiness. The Sentinel Points can be later converted to UPP tokens.
The UPP token is an utility token, which is commonly used to license our advanced products and services as well as paying online/on-chain processing fees. To do that, we can add value swaps between different types of tokens. People can monetize Sentinel Points and turn them into fiat or other market leading cryptocurrencies, therefore receiving monetary rewards for their contributions. By doing so, we are incentivizing good behavior and discouraging illicit malicious behavior.
Q. Who are Sentinel Protocol’s competitors and how do you differ?
We see different types of organizations trying to bring new products into the market. But I don’t think other projects are like us in terms of the target market and the approach. We are a pioneer in providing cybersecurity solutions, consulting experts, and innovative technologies to make the crypto space safer.
One of the biggest problems in the decentralized space is that while crypto projects raise funds through ICOs, there are a lot of hacks, scams, and threats during these processes. During our own ICO, for example, we experienced different types of threats and attacks. We were able to leverage the expertise and capabilities of our team members to effectively defend against those attacks. However, that’s not the case with typical ICO projects without in-house security experts. If crypto companies are not able to withstand these attacks, it may cause irreparable damage to themselves and the crypto space. This is why we provide solutions like the Uppward Chrome Extension so that not only individual crypto users, but also projects themselves are able to identify dangerous URLs, wallet addresses, social media accounts, and any investment transactions that take place.
On a side note, as the first mover in the blockchain cybersecurity space, we would like to point out that we have partners such as: ImToken, Kyber Network, Bluzelle, Bibox, PolicyPal Network, IDEX, and many others.
Q: What are the biggest challenges Sentinel Protocol faces today and how do you plan to overcome them?
During the initial phase of building the ecosystem, Uppsala Foundation selects cybersecurity experts who pass various requirements to be the Sentinels. One of our challenges is building the platform infrastructure to allow these Sentinels to eventually operate without being governed by a central controlling body. Therefore, it is our responsibility to make sure that the early Sentinels are first-tier cybersecurity experts who understand how to use the best security practices. As the system stabilizes over time, during which consensus and community voting matures, the Sentinels will be determined by the Sentinel Protocol community and ecosystem participants. I am positive it will happen, but think this process will take a lot of time, research, and education.
