PolySwarm is a decentralized marketplace that is headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico and was founded in 2014 by Steve Bassi, Paul Makowski, Ben Schmidt, Maxwell Koo, and Nick Davis. The PolySwarm platform runs on a cryptocurrency token called Nectar (NCT). Nectar replaces the subscription payments charged by anti-virus vendors and intends to reward contributors to submit and classify potential threats to the PolySwarm network.
PolySwarm is powered by a network of threat detection engines and combines coverage from commercial engines and specialized solutions. The specialized solutions are niche and research driven, often authored by researchers and security teams developing threat detection models. Their model allows them to cover existing protection gaps and protects against emerging threats. The crowdsourced threat intelligence engines are able to compete with new technologies and threat detection methods through PolySwarm. The PolySwarm platform also works to offer a launchpad for these new technologies and threat detection methods and a place where they can compete against commercial solutions and specialized engines.
PolySwarm's threat detection is based on multiple threat detection engines with money-backed opinions at the artifact level. Their determinations on a threat are economically rewarded and penalized based on the accuracy of their determinations. This is an automated process. These threat detection engines compete to protect consumers.
The PolySwarm PolyScore provides contextual threat scoring and a probability score for a given file and whether it contains malware through a single number. PolyScore comes to a final numerical threat score by weighing an engine's opinion based on the engine's recent past performance, strengths, confidence levels and other contextual threat indicators built from daily assertions generated inside PolySwarm.
From February 20, 2018 to March 22, 2018 PolySwarm held their initial coin offering (ICO) selling approximately $25.9 million in Nectar (NCT).
Timeline
Nectar token (NCT) will facilitate global threat detection, replacing outdated antivirus models.
Funding rounds
People
Chris Eagle
Advisor
David Dubov
Employee
Javier Botella
Senior Security Engineer
Karla Sanchez
Office Manager / Executive Assistant
Marie Watkins
Employee
Max Koo
Co-Founder & Director of Product Development
Nicole Beauchemin
Founder
Paul Makowski
Co-Founder & CTO
Further reading
Interview with Steve Bassi, the CEO of PolySwarm on the Nectar (NCT) Token Sale | TechBullion
Angela Scott-Briggs
Web
The PolySwarm Timeline (So Far!) - PolySwarm - Medium
PolySwarm
Web
Documentaries, videos and podcasts
PolySwarm Demo: Command Line Interface and Free Features
January 6, 2020