Our Energi Bureau of Investigations (EBI) has exciting news! Since the implementation of our EBI recovery tool and the safety mechanism for exchange deposits, we’ve realized a 70% reduction in cybercrime!

Cybersecurity has been at the heart of Energi since its inception. Keeping investors’ funds and digital assets safe is extremely important for mainstream adoption.

In this article, you’ll find out why cybersecurity is crucial for cryptocurrency adoption, what the EBI recovery tool is, and how it works. You’ll also see how much our high-security standards reduce cybercrime — as well as what our community members have to say.

Ready? Let’s go!

Why Cybersecurity Is Important For Crypto

During the migration to Gen 3, malicious actors targeted our community and attempted to access their wallets through various phishing methods. These scammers tried to impersonate members of Energi customer support and leadership. The scammers would typically pretend that they were the good guys, extracting data like private keys from our community members.

Once they gained access to a user’s wallet, they sent the funds to exchanges and dumped the stolen NRG. This represented not just a threat to those individual users, but the Energi community as a whole.

One of the common risks for any crypto project is coin dumping. When scammers manage to steal large amounts of coins and cash them for other crypto or fiat, they can negatively impact the entire network’s wealth.

The inability to recover stolen funds is a threat to the whole cryptocurrency space. It’s also one of the main reasons institutional money and traditional investors are not comfortable allocating their funds to crypto. Even worse, it prevents crypto from going mainstream, as ordinary people are scared of investing in it.

Energi is leading the space by having an in-house cybersecurity department, the EBI, and the most responsive customer support team in crypto. We also implemented the EBI recovery tool, a security process that helps our community report crimes.

What Is the EBI Recovery Tool?

Energi implemented the EBI recovery tool in its blockchain, by which users can report fraudulent transactions and malicious actors to our cybersecurity team. Users can communicate issues to our customer support team 24/7, giving Energi one of the fastest response times in the whole of crypto.

After the migration to Gen 3, we also implemented a safety mechanism to delay transactions to exchanges. By requiring 5,000 confirmations for exchange deposits, our users have more time to get in touch with our customer support and cybersecurity team. Users can report alleged fraudulent transactions, which the EBI will then investigate.

Thanks to our on-chain governance system, if 10% of masternodes agree, the network can block an account accused of fraud. A two-week window then opens, during which our cybersecurity team will assess if a specific wallet committed a crime.

Let’s look into the details of how the EBI recovery tool works.

How Does EBI Recovery Work?

Users can report issues directly to our community management and customer support teams, which will inform the EBI to start its investigation and the recovery process. If the EBI finds that a wallet is malicious, it can be blocked, and its funds can be drained and returned to its legitimate owner.

Our cybersecurity experts have put a strict procedure with several steps to initiate the recovery to prevent spamming. Each step of the process needs to meet some prerequisites to ensure legitimacy.

Here are the steps for the recovery process:

Prerequisites for Block

First comes the ‘Proof of involvement.’ The person that reports a situation to the EBI must prove that they were involved (i.e., the victim). The user demonstrates this by signing a message from the wallet where the loss occurred.

The user will have to provide sufficient credible data that justify a block. For instance, it’s not enough to say, “all my money is gone.” The user needs to explain what happened in more refined details and provide data supporting their story. If the EBI assesses that the user meets the prerequisites, it will put its stamp on the block proposal, and at least 10% of the masternodes will need to vote for it to go through.

Also, the user will need to put up 1000 NRG as collateral. By requesting this collateral, we avoid malicious abuse of the process. This collateral is only required if the user files the proposal without the assistance of the EBI. However, if they report it to customer support and EBI conducts an initial investigation, the EBI could submit all the process proposals without any collateral required from the user.

Prerequisites for Drain

Second, the user will need to submit a Proof of Claim/Crime. Once the masternodes vote for a block, the real investigation work begins, and the EBI team collects evidence. Once sufficient data has been provided, a drain proposal can be submitted and endorsed.

Third, the victim needs to submit a Proof of Action Fraud Report. If the victim reports a crime, like stolen funds or impersonation, they will have to file an official action fraud report with their local law enforcement authorities and prove that they have done so. This way, the EBI can act knowing that the alleged victim involves real-world police and legal institutions.

Once again, the user must put up 1000 NRG as collateral to submit a voting proposal to the masternodes, and at least 10% of them would have to agree on it.

Prerequisites for Recovery

Last, filling a Know Your Customer (KYC) form. The user must provide legal documentation proving their identity and sign certified documents under penalty of perjury that all their provided testimony and data are accurate.

The recovery would need just 100 NRG as collateral and another masternode vote. If and when all the prerequisites are met, the funds will be returned to the legitimate owner.

Besides this rigorous process, we have several checks and balances to prevent single points of failure. For example, no single EBI agent can handle a case end-to-end. It always requires at least two separate agents to review and double-check the case findings.

Thanks to all these security processes and measures, we have seen a 70% drop in cybercrime.

The Cybercrime Decline

The results of combining EBI recovery with a delayed confirmation for exchange deposits are astounding. The monthly Raid Attack Occurrences went down from several thousand to a mere 69 in July.

A raid attack means that several hundreds of accounts join our Discord server in a matter of minutes. Then they send messages to all the users, perhaps “warning” them about a bug, and asking them to click on a link. If a user clicks, the raider might gain access to their login credentials.

Thanks to the EBI recovery and the safety mechanism for exchange deposits, the EBI recovered over $750,000 worth of NRG across more than ten different cases.

The number of Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) also went down dramatically. APTs include malicious behavior like automated bots and social engineering.

APTs are the most dangerous sort of attack, as scammers will search for the more vulnerable users, and then target them individually. The numbers of APTs fell right after the implementation of all our EBI features.

Our success in fighting off crime is proof that cryptocurrency needs strong measures. Our bank-grade security methods keep users safe and our network healthy, attracting more people to join Energi.

When we announced the implementation of the safety mechanism for exchange deposits, we claimed that this innovative feature would change how the crypto world operates. We also said that it might become the new security standard across the cryptocurrency space.

Now, we can proudly confirm it. Our effective cybersecurity measures are repelling scammers and keeping our community safe. And you don’t have to take our word for it.

Thankful Words From Our Community

Our users constantly give us great feedback about the EBI recovery tool and the exchange deposits’ safety mechanism:

User #1:

Hello everyone. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to all of your team. What you have accomplished to help me, my father and a few others retrieve our stolen funds is beyond amazing. I strongly believe that these features of what you have created to help protect your communities from the hackers and scammers that litter the crypto sphere is a major component that is missing and will help drive more adoption and interest to many people. I realize that this was my mistake and I should have paid closer attention to the simple guidelines to avoid this type of theft. I am learning and becoming more aware of how to be as secure as possible in the future. We all look very forward to taking possession of our funds again and getting our masternodes up and running. We all believe very strongly in the NRG ecosystem and will support your team and this project and promote it throughout our networks. Once again thank you all for your hard work and dedication throughout this process. The NRG blockchain and ecosystem has all the best features and an amazing team driving this dream to reality and adoption. Namaste

User #2:

Thank you, Peter. Obviously I want this to be put in the past as well. It’s great that you have this system now. I obviously want to see the funds in my address, as you say, before I can thank you again and move on from this. You never stop learning in life and I learned another lesson due to this. We will talk again soon. I will let you get back to other things. Best regards, E.

User #3:

Hello everyone, I just wanted to share a short story with you: back in March just before lockdown, my laptop got hacked. Hacker could access my wallets via my VPS and cleared out all of them, including 9k NRGs… NRG support, especially EBI, were the only ones who moved to help me: they found the hacker, froze his account, and today I recovered all my NRGs. And guess what? With the NRG price increase, the amount of NRGs I recovered is equal/higher to the damage suffered. Special thanks to EBI agents Alpha and Delta (unfortunately, agent Echo seems to be MIA… ) To all newcomers here I just say you can be confident in the project, team, or support: thorough, involved, and effective, they won’t let you down. Big thanks again to all NRG team and sorry for spamming all channels.

Cybersecurity And The Future Of Crypto

Energi is leading the way and setting an example for the rest of the crypto space. Sooner or later, the rest of the projects will understand the importance of having these types of security measures and user-protection.
We’re bringing the best real-world business practices to the cryptocurrency space, and we’re changing the common perception that crypto is a digital version of the “wild west.”

With our cybersecurity tools, we’re helping crypto mature as an industry by bringing safety measures that are standard in traditional finance.

And this is just the beginning! We’ll continue developing features to keep malicious actors away from our community members until they feel safer than with their banks. Join us on this exciting journey!