GateLive AMA Recap-Forta

Q1:What is the role of FORT in the network?

The primary use of FORT is as a work/staking token. Bot developers and node runners must stake different amounts of FORT to activate their bot or node, respectively. The secondary use of FORT is as a governance token. FORT tokenholders are able to vote on certain network-level decisions.

Q2: Why should someone stake FORT? And describe the new staking vaults?

If you’re a bot developer or node runner on the network, you have to stake FORT directly.

If you’re simply a passive FORT token holder, you can participate in what is called delegated staking. By participating in delegating staking, your FORT is adding to the security of the network. How does that work? Well, by increasing the FORT staked on each scan node, node runners have a greater financial incentive to act in the best interest of the network. In exchange for adding to the security of the network, you earn staking rewards distributed on a weekly basis.

The first version of delegated staking was admittedly not the greatest UX. Stakers had to manually stake and rebalance their FORT across dozens of pools to maximize their yield. FORT holders shared they wanted a better staking experience and we listened.

On April 24, Forta announced the FORT Staking Vault. This streamlines the staking process for FORT token holders by removing all the complexity of managing different staking pools. All you need to do is deposit into the vault when you want to stake, and withdraw from the vault when you want to stop. Very straightforward. On the backend, once you deposit FORT into the vault, it gets allocated across the various staking pools to maximize yield, but all that complexity is abstracted away.

We’re optimistic the Staking Vault will increase the % of overall FORT staked.

Q3: Forta just published its eco map last week. What, and how, are projects working with Forta?

So there are two primary ways other projects and teams can interact with Forta. You can contribute to the network by providing detection bots or operating scan nodes, or supporting those two functions, or you can simply consume the threat intelligence the network generates.

On the contribution side, there are teams like OpenZeppelin, Nethermind, Blocksec and Chainpatrol. On the consumption side, there are teams like Metamask, Blowfish, and Solidus Labs.

Q4: What is Forta’s focus for the rest of 2024?

Threat prevention. For the first few years, Forta was focused exclusively on threat detection. Today, detection has advanced a lot and most exploits are detected early. The challenge is no longer detection, but prevention. So the Forta community is shifting its focus to answering the question “how can we prevent this malicious transaction from having any impact?”

Q5: Why does Web3 need a decentralized security network like Forta?

It certainly benefits from it. Our focus has always been to make threat detection and prevention a valuable part of the “security stack” and something that DeFi teams prioritize, just like an audit. We do this a bit differently as a decentralized network. Forta provides a lot of public infrastructure and open source tools that the industry uses to monitor for and detect threats. We expect it to eventually support threat prevention too. This makes monitoring easier to do, which means more teams are doing it as a result.