Explorations in Web3 Ecosystem Security: Threat Landscape, Research Achievements, and Future Directions

Web3's rapid development has introduced diverse virtual assets and complex transaction scenarios, creating new security challenges and leading to significant economic losses across the ecosystem.

At the 2023 International Conference on Blockchain and Trusted Systems, Wang Jiashui, Industry Chair of Ant Group's Ant Security Sky Dome Lab, delivered a keynote titled "Preliminary Exploration of Web3 Ecosystem Security," covering the current security landscape, the lab's research results, and future outlook.

The talk highlighted that despite a decline in overall cryptocurrency market capitalization, the lucrative nature of Web3 and still‑nascent security infrastructure keep hacker activity high; cross‑chain bridges suffered the greatest monetary losses, DeFi projects experienced the highest attack frequency, and vulnerabilities in verification, platform layers, and business‑logic design caused the most damage.

Three main directions for Web3 security development were identified: (1) platform‑level security (virtual machine, protocol, consensus, and supply‑chain security), (2) smart‑contract security across its lifecycle—pre‑detection, in‑process interception, and post‑incident tracing, and (3) client‑side security focusing on associated applications.

Sky Dome Lab’s work includes building a WASM bytecode decoder for fuzz testing, developing a reinforcement‑learning‑guided, vulnerability‑and‑coverage‑aware fuzzing approach for smart contracts (published at ASE), and creating a DeFi token leakage detection system that models token flows, normalizes values across assets, and identifies abnormal yield patterns.

Future efforts will explore integrating large‑model AI techniques, expanding a comprehensive Web3 security platform, and strengthening defense capabilities across the entire ecosystem.

Additional information describes Ant Security Sky Dome Lab’s background, achievements, and recent awards such as the Pwnie Awards "Best Privilege Escalation" prize.