The Ones in the Arena: Sherlock

“We think protecting user funds is still a massively under-explored problem.” —Jack Sanford, Sherlock

The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place Code4rena’s philosophy.

To kick off this new series, we invited Jack Sanford and Evert Kors, the co-founders of Sherlock, to tell us a little about their new project. Sanford (Protocol Design) came to DeFi by way of traditional finance, where he became deeply disillusioned watching big banks get bailed out and everyday people losing their shirts. Together with his co-founder Kors (Smart Contracts), he’s keen to help DeFi avoid those pitfalls and establish itself as an alternative that’s accessible and safe for everyone.

What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?

We are building a new type of decentralized smart contract security protocol. We love DeFi and we want it to be accessible to more people. In order to make that happen, DeFi needs to be safer.

We’re creating a risk management protocol that can protect large amounts of TVL at projects in an affordable and scalable way so that more people can get access to more protected yield opportunities.

“We are building a system that will enable ordinary users to put their money into DeFi without worrying about smart contract hacks. It’s quite simple but right now it’s not accessible and affordable for most people.”

What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?

We think DeFi will be the new financial system for much of the world. We want to bring that vision to life as soon as possible. One of the biggest problems with DeFi in our opinion is the security of funds in DeFi protocols. We are building a system that will enable ordinary users to put their money into DeFi without worrying about smart contract hacks. It’s quite simple but right now it’s not accessible and affordable for most people. With Sherlock, we are creating a way to protect funds in a scalable way so that everyone can get access to protected yields. This will help bring DeFi to mass adoption!

What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?

Our protocol actually utilizes a decentralized team of security and risk experts who do fundamental analysis at the individual protocol level to determine the risk of protocols. This enables us to price coverage as accurately as possible and create liquidity behind those prices.

“We can increase the quality of life for billions of people simply by bringing them more robust financial options.”

What gets you most excited about DeFi?

I (Jack) used to work in TradFi and I don’t know if we have enough time to describe all the ways that the traditional financial system falls short. This is especially acute and tragic for people whose governments or personal situations don’t allow them to have access to financial tools. We can increase the quality of life for billions of people simply by bringing them more robust financial options. This makes us think that DeFi will be one of the biggest improvements to humanity in the 21st century and we are humbled to be able to contribute to the movement.

I wish more DeFi projects would…

Exist. Plain and simple. A lot of the hurdles in the space are simply a lack of awareness and talent spending their time in DeFi. I hope we can help get the word out in the next few years!

What DeFi project name do you wish you’d thought of first?

I know we should talk about sushi or pancakes here but we’re pretty jealous of Aave’s alphabetical superiority. Unless someone comes out with Aardvark, it’s going to be pretty tough to one-up them in an alphabetical list.

What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?

We think the NFT movement is super awesome and if we had time we’d spend more time on that side of crypto. Otherwise we play a lot of CS:GO and Age of Empires II when we aren’t busy with Sherlock (which is not often these days!).

Is there anything else you want to add?

We’re a super small team of developers who are really passionate about bringing DeFi to mass adoption. And we think protecting user funds is still a massively under-explored problem. If you feel the same way, we’d love to chat and are always looking to add to the team! Hit us up at contact@sherlock.xyz.