Recently, a series of thefts have occurred across the industry. Every security incident affects not just one company, but everyone’s trust in the crypto industry.
It also reminds me of why we started working on Proof of Reserves (PoR) in 2020. The idea was simple: if users entrust their assets to an exchange for safekeeping, they have the right to know whether those assets are fully backed. Trust isn’t about believing promises; it requires verifiable evidence.
Over time, PoR was adopted by more and more exchanges and became a very important part of the industry’s security framework.
When change happens, it can look like just an experiment. Only in hindsight do we realize that it has gradually become an industry consensus.
Over the past few years, we have consistently made platform security and user funds our top priorities, continually optimizing and improving our exchange security measures. But these recent incidents have made me realize that Proof of Reserves alone is not enough for an exchange.
PoR can tell users whether an exchange has sufficient asset reserves, but it doesn’t answer another equally important question: how exactly are those assets stored? No exchange can promise that it faces no risk of theft, but how much of its assets are in cold wallets and how much in hot wallets? In the worst-case scenario, would the assets in cold storage still be enough to cover user assets? This information can be disclosed to users transparently; the industry just doesn’t yet have a public, unified measurement standard.
So today, Gate launched Proof of Security (PoSEC). With PoSEC, users no longer have to simply take an exchange’s word that “assets are safe.” They can directly view the cold storage coverage ratio, calculation methodology, and asset storage structure, with the relevant data verified through a third-party audit.
PoSEC introduces a straightforward metric: the cold storage coverage ratio. As long as this figure is at least 100%, it means that even if the assets in an exchange’s hot wallets were wiped out, the assets in cold storage would still be sufficient to cover all user assets.
Gate’s latest PoSEC cold storage coverage ratio is 104.58%.
Here, cold storage includes not only on-chain crypto assets, but also traditional off-chain assets involved in the platform’s business. For on-chain digital assets counted as cold storage, private keys are kept offline, asset transfers require multiple signatures, and transaction details are independently verified before signing. Traditional assets such as stocks and U.S. Treasuries are held by independent custodians and transferred and managed according to established authorization procedures. We are working with an independent third-party audit firm, and the report will be published on our official website once the audit is complete. We will also share more details over time.
Cold storage is important because keeping private keys offline can greatly reduce the risk of on-chain assets being exposed to online attacks. The higher the cold storage coverage ratio, the greater the safety buffer for user assets in extreme situations. This is increasingly drawing attention from regulators. Recently, South Korean regulators have also been discussing raising the required proportion of exchange assets held in cold wallets.
When Proof of Reserves went live in 2020, I had no idea how far it would go.
This time, we also hope PoSEC will become more than just a security measure at Gate and can become an industry consensus. If more platforms are willing to disclose their hot and cold wallet structures and let users verify how their assets are protected, users will have a genuine standard for comparison, and the industry’s overall security threshold will rise.
True trust should be built on public, transparent, and verifiable data.
PoSEC’s calculation methodology and cold storage standards are now public. We welcome our peers to refer to them, and all users to scrutinize them.
gate.com/proof-of-security
Don’t trust, verify.