When CertiK took the stage at the Global Blockchain Show during Abu Dhabi Fintech Week, the room felt like a reality check for anyone still treating Web3 security as an afterthought. Jason Jiang, CertiK’s chief business officer, gave a keynote that mixed clear-eyed data with plain-speaking advice about what builders and institutions need to do now if Web3 is going to scale safely.
Jiang opened with a hard number from CertiK’s own research: the first half of 2025 saw about $2.47 billion lost to security incidents across space. It’s the kind of figure that snaps conversations out of abstractions and forces people to focus on concrete fixes, better wallet hygiene, stronger anti-phishing measures and coordinated threat-sharing between projects and custodians.
Security First
He didn’t just rattle statistics. Jiang walked through CertiK’s security framework, built around trust, transparency and resilience, and explained how those ideas translate into day-to-day practice: automated monitoring, safer key management, and audit processes that assume humans will make mistakes and plan for them. Wallet compromise and phishing, he noted, were among the costliest and most frequent forms of attack in H1 2025, underlining the need for practical, user-facing defenses as much as clever back-end fixes.
There was a candidness to the talk that landed with the diverse crowd in the hall. Abu Dhabi Fintech Week, and the Global Blockchain Show that runs inside it, brings together regulators, bankers, tech teams and startups, people who usually speak different languages but share an urgent common interest: how to make on-chain systems safe enough for wider use.
“It took the traditional finance system 450 years to mature. Blockchain technology has only been in existence since 2009. It would take all the builders and participants to establish a more mature technology and ecosystem, welcoming the forthcoming mass adoption. We at CertiK believe the future is about building trust, transparency and resilience, we are ready,” Jiang said, capturing both the caution and the optimism behind the company’s push.
Beyond talk of frameworks and figures, Jiang urged attendees toward simple, cooperative steps: share threat intelligence, standardize security benchmarks so institutional buyers can compare vendors, and bake anti-phishing and wallet-protection measures into onboarding flows. For many in the audience, the point was clear: product features and regulatory clarity matter, but without improved operational hygiene, those gains will be fragile.
By the time the session wrapped, what lingered wasn’t fear so much as a call to action: mass adoption will follow only if the ecosystem gets serious about the basics of safety and accountability. With regulators and big financial players increasingly present in these conversations, the hope and the work now is to turn those words into standards, practices and products that protect real people’s money.