This “FP-7” proposal was commissioned by the Forta Governance Council to seek community feedback and approval regarding Forta Firewall, a novel exploit prevention network developed by members of the Forta community, including OpenZeppelin, Nethermind and individual contributors.
You can read more about Forta Firewall in this blog post and its potential to help protocols and rollups actually prevent malicious transactions from executing. The Forta Network set the standard for on-chain monitoring and threat detection and boasts a strong community of security experts and established monitoring infrastructure. Now, it is believed that supporting the further development and integration of Forta Firewall into the Forta Network could have a tremendous impact on making smart contracts safer, in alignment with Forta’s long-standing mission to protect all assets on chain.
The motivation for bringing FP-7 to the community now is the gaining traction and high potential of the Forta Firewall solution to improve on-chain security. FP-7 proposes the following four actions that are designed to support the further development and growth of Forta Firewall, including its integration into the Forta Network if it proves successful:
1. Foundation funding of Forta Firewall integrations and the Forta Chain testnet
2. Promotion of Forta Firewall through official Forta channels
3. Community Governance over Forta Firewall
4. Integration of Forta Firewall into the Forta Network
The 4 items proposed in FP-7 are described in more detail below under the corresponding numbered heading. Voting on FP-7 will be determined by a majority approval vote of FORT token holders on Snapshot beginning on September 24, 2024 and ending on September 26, 2024 (exact times to be announced through official Forta channels) and a vote for FP-7 is a vote of approval for all four items.
1. Foundation funding of Forta Firewall integrations and Forta Chain testnet
The initial development of Forta Firewall was undertaken by members of the Forta community, including OpenZeppelin, Nethermind, and other independent developers pursuant to funding and support by the Forta Foundation, which was initially approved by the Forta Governance Council in it’s April 19, 2024 meeting. FP-7 proposes that the Foundation allocate additional funds to help advance development to a production-ready solution (including launch of the Forta Chain), conduct smart contract security audits, and sponsor initial integrations with protocols that have committed to be early adopters of Forta Firewall. If approved, the Forta Governance Council can review related budgets and RFPs to ensure proper resource allocation as the solution matures given the diverse experience of Council members.
2. Community Governance over Forta Firewall
The Forta Network has a solid community governance protocol in place that has been functioning well for over three years. The Forta Foundation is key to this governance structure as an independent, non-profit legal entity that helps formally implement the Forta community governance structure and is capable of holding intellectual property rights on behalf of the Forta community, so that Forta Network software can be made available under open-source licenses for anyone to review and use and other off-chain infrastructure can be managed.
In order to ensure that Forta Firewall’s development incorporates key tenants of decentralization and remains accessible to all of Web3, it is proposed under FP-7 that the Foundation continue to manage and govern the Forta Firewall intellectual property and related infrastructure in accordance with the existing Forta Network community governance processes. Additionally, the Foundation will engage appropriate experts and advisors to help determine the appropriate licenses required for the various components of Forta Firewall as it matures.
FP-7 proposes that Forta Firewall be officially integrated into the Forta Network and that if the testnet proves successful (see more below), any upgradeable Forta Firewall smart contracts be managed by the Forta Council multisig and any ancillary infrastructure be managed by the Forta Foundation in accordance with its mission.
3. Promotion of Forta Firewall through official Forta channels
The Forta Network currently operates as a robust open network that enables a peer-to-peer data marketplace, with over 320 detection bots and 5 specialized data feeds available for anyone to subscribe to directly on-chain. There are over 3,000 nodes operating in the network with over 21 million FORT staked, which acts as a powerful incentive mechanism for nodes to produce accurate alerts and allows users to rely on a decentralized compute network rather than a centralized provider.
Given the large number of participants in the current roles in the Forta Network, FP-7 proposes that the Forta Foundation engage appropriate vendors to develop content for Forta Firewall that can be prominently included in the current Forta properties in order to promote and drive growth to the novel Forta Firewall solution, including a new landing page, Forta Firewall branding, blog posts, tweets and other media content. FP-7 proposes that until Forta Firewall has significant traction, Forta Firewall content should take precedence over existing Forta Network roles given the Forta Network already has strong participation.
Additionally, FP-7 proposes that once the Forta Firewall testnet is launched, related technical documentation and guides should be produced to support onboarding of both users and participants to Forta Firewall. Care will be taken to ensure that all new Forta Firewall content aligns with the current branding and messaging of the Forta Network, given that the new solution leverages much of the same technology.
4. Integration of Forta Firewall into the Forta Network
Forta Firewall is expected to be launched in Q4 2024, with a number of protocols planning to integrate Forta Firewall in order to detect and block malicious transactions before they can be executed in their protocols. FP-7 proposes that the Forta Firewall solution be officially integrated into the Forta Network and that if the testnet proves successful, the Forta Firewall smart contracts be managed by the Forta Council multisig and related infrastructure be managed by the Foundation in accordance with its mission. In accordance with its mission “to steward the continued evolution of Forta by facilitating the collective action of its decentralized community of developers, participants, and users,” the Foundation will help the Forta community leverage its diverse ecosystem to support the development and decentralization of Forta Firewall over time.
How to contribute
As always, additional feedback or contributions from other members of the community is tremendously valuable. Please reach out to the Forta Foundation if you want to get involved directly, or feel free to use the Forum or other channels like Discord to provide input. There will be plenty of opportunities for current Forta Network participants to leverage their existing expertise in Forta Firewall, so stay tuned for updates.