Cube3.ai, a cryptocurrency-focused security startup that protects smart contracts by blocking malicious transactions, has emerged from stealth mode having raised $8.2 million of seed funding.

The seed round was led by Blockchange Ventures with participation from Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, ICLUB and TA Ventures.

Periodic attacks on public blockchain-based systems and decentralized finance (DeFi) have earned the sector a reputation as a playground for hackers and cyber criminals, where the financial incentives for bad actors are generally much higher than in the current, so-called Web2, world.

When there’s a wave of innovation, typically a wave of crime comes with it, which is what motivated Cube3.ai founder and CEO Einaras Gravrock, a seasoned builder of Web2 security platforms, to go beyond essentials such as manual code audits and post-attack alerts to create a system that checks crypto transactions in real time.

Cube3.ai uses machine learning and pattern matching to give newly deployed smart contracts a risk score. Criminals continually deploy new contracts from new wallets that moments later may propose a malicious transaction against a target contract. This leaves only a short window to evaluate new contracts for malicious intent, Gravrock said.

“On behalf of our clients, we equip decentralized applications and smart contracts to identify exploits, and then to decline exploits as they are being proposed,” said Gravrock in an interview with CoinDesk. “It means contracts and applications can carry on processing legitimate transactions, so it’s a bit like a guardian angel is watching over your contract.”