Security might seem fundamental for an industry focused on fomenting a digital currency revolution, but the crypto industry seems to have somehow skipped the basics in its rush to decentralize banking. Recent losses from poorly protected cryptocurrency exchanges have exposed just how vulnerable the industry’s assets really are. If blockchain is really ready to enter the mainstream, it needs to let go of the Wild-West attitude and implement standardized security practices.

“In my mind, security shouldn’t be a differentiator,” said Yo Sub Kwon (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Hosho Group Inc. “If you’re an exchange and you’re holding massive amounts of other people’s assets, you should take security very seriously. That should just be a default, a standard.”

Kwon spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the HoshoCon event in Las Vegas. They discussed the need for communication and collaboration over security practices in the crypto industry.

All problems relate directly to security

“I just feel like it’s really important for us as an industry to discuss what security practices are good, what should be done, how you should do them, what resources are available to companies to learn more about security, and what resources don’t exist and need to be developed. And that needs to be done in a collaborative way,” Kwon stated, explaining why Hosho chose to position HoshoCon not as a company show but an industry-wide security event.

Bringing together the different members of the community to share solutions is the goal of HoshoCon. “Whether they’re lawyers, or they’re information security experts, or regulators, or they’re developers, bring them all into the same room to discuss these problems that plague all of us. You know, a developer’s gonna have a much different perspective and solution than a lawyer, but those things can work together,” Kwon said.

The industry has already introduced security measures, such as smart contracts, which build blockchain security into business contracts with the agreement terms embedded into the lines of code. However, errors are common. At first many developers were unfamiliar with how to create smart contracts, and the complexity of the contracts is growing in tandem with their learning curve, meaning that the accuracy challenge is ongoing. To address this problem, Hosho developed the Meadow Suite specifically for smart contract development.

“We’ve built it intentionally with security analysis in mind, and then we made it more full-featured to become a development tool for writing smart contracts and developing on protocols,” Kwon said. Meadow Suite is available freely on GitHub as an open security tool for the whole community to access.

“We’re trying to do our part. We can’t and won’t do it alone, but we try to develop things that if we develop anything that’s useful from a security perspective, [we] make it available for everyone,” Kwon concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of HoshoCon 2018.

Photo: SiliconANGLE