OpenZeppelin

What OpenZeppelin does

OpenZeppelin, legally Zeppelin Group Ltd (incorporated in England and Wales, 2015), is the dominant smart contract security and infrastructure provider for onchain finance. The company builds and maintains the OpenZeppelin Contracts Library — the industry-standard, battle-tested smart contract library for Solidity and Cairo that underpins 9 of the top 10 stablecoins, 10 of the top 10 tokenized money-market funds, and over $31 trillion in cumulative transfer value. Its technology stack spans developer tools (Contracts Wizard, Upgrades Plugins, Relayer, Monitor, UI Builder, Safe Utils, Access Control), the Defender cloud platform for onchain operations, and a set of open-source Daml verification tools (daml-lint, daml-props, daml-verify) for the Canton Network.

The company monetizes across three streams: (1) professional services security audits — Smart Contract Audits, ZKP Audits, and Blockchain Infrastructure Audits — priced at approximately $25,000 per engineer-week for top-tier engagements; (2) subscription-based recurring revenue from the Continuous Security Program (an always-on model covering Architect, Build, Secure, and Support lifecycle phases with reserved researcher capacity) and Defender cloud subscriptions; and (3) commercial licensing for AGPL-licensed enterprise tools. Its customer base spans DeFi protocols (Aave, Uniswap, Compound, 1inch, Synthetix, Morpho, UMA), Layer 2 and blockchain infrastructure (ZKsync, Optimism, Scroll, Arbitrum, The Graph, Ethereum Foundation, Mantle, AvaLabs), and traditional financial institutions (Fidelity Digital Assets, DTCC, BitGo, WisdomTree).

OpenZeppelin has conducted 900+ audits identifying 10,000+ vulnerabilities (700+ critical/high), secured over $250 billion in onchain value, and reports a 95% client rehire rate. Its go-to-market combines product-led growth through free open-source tools with enterprise field sales for institutional engagements. In 2025-2026 the company launched the AI Auditor (trained on its proprietary vulnerability corpus), Contracts MCP and Contracts Skills (AI-agent development tooling), and the Continuous Security Program subscription, marking a strategic shift from point-in-time professional services toward AI-augmented, recurring platform revenue.

Name

OpenZeppelin

Legal name

Zeppelin Group Ltd

Website

https://openzeppelin.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2015

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

OpenZeppelin provides smart contract security infrastructure — including the industry-standard Contracts Library, Defender cloud platform, AI Auditor, and elite audit services — for DeFi protocols, blockchain networks, and financial institutions managing onchain assets.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Blockchain Smart Contract Security

NAICS

Security Systems Services (except Locksmiths) (561621)

akta.pro primary industry

Smart Contract Auditing & Formal Verification (FSAPAJAA)

akta.pro secondary industry

Smart Contract Frameworks & SDKs (developer kits, templates, standards) (FSAPABAB)

Keywords

• Smart contract security
• Blockchain security audits
• DeFi infrastructure
• Onchain security platform
• Crypto developer tools

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

Spain

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Continuous Security Program Subscriptions: Subscription-based engagement model providing always-on security coverage across the full development lifecycle. Includes reserved researcher capacity and priority access. Senior security researchers lead every engagement with AI-augmented analysis.
2. Security Audits: Professional security audit services including Smart Contract Audits, ZKP Audits, and Blockchain Infrastructure Audits. Conducted by elite researchers with expertise in PhD-level mathematics, cryptography, low-level EVM operations, and finance. Top-tier engagements approximately $25,000 per engineer-week.
3. Defender Cloud Services: Subscription-based cloud platform for operating onchain applications. Includes Relayer, Monitor, UI Builder, and Safe Utils. Billed in advance with automatic renewal at end of subscription term.
4. Commercial Licensing: Commercial licenses available for AGPL-licensed software (Wizard, Relayer, Monitor, Safe Utils) for enterprises and financial institutions that prefer not to use software under AGPL terms. Contact-based pricing.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

OpenZeppelin provides professional security audit services and an open-source development stack for smart contracts powering onchain finance. Its offerings include the industry-standard Contracts Library, the Defender cloud operations platform, the AI-powered AI Auditor, and a Continuous Security Program subscription, complemented by tools covering transaction relaying, monitoring, and Daml verification for institutional Canton Network deployments.

Product overview

OpenZeppelin is a comprehensive platform for developing, securing, and operating onchain financial infrastructure. The portfolio consists of open-source smart contract libraries (Contracts Library, Upgrades Plugins) and developer tools (Contracts Wizard, Relayer, Monitor, UI Builder, Safe Utils, Access Control) forming the core development and operations stack, complemented by AI-powered offerings (AI Auditor, Contracts MCP, Contracts Skills) that extend secure development to AI coding agents. Services include Smart Contract Security Audits, ZKP Audits, Blockchain Infrastructure Audits, and the Continuous Security Program—a subscription engagement model providing always-on coverage. Three open-source Daml verification tools (daml-lint, daml-props, daml-verify) address smart contract security for the Canton Network's Daml-based infrastructure. Over $31 trillion has been transferred through the Contracts ecosystem, with $250 billion in TVL secured across 900+ audits.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• OpenZeppelin Contracts: The standard smart contract library for Solidity and Cairo development, battle-tested and widely adopted across the blockchain ecosystem.
• OpenZeppelin Defender
• OpenZeppelin Wizard
• OpenZeppelin Contracts MCP
• OpenZeppelin Upgrades Plugins
• OpenZeppelin Relayer
• OpenZeppelin Monitor
• OpenZeppelin AI Auditor
• daml-lint
• daml-props
• daml-verify
• Ethernaut CTF
• OpenZeppelin Access Control
• OpenZeppelin Safe Utils
• OpenZeppelin UI Builder

Products and services

• OpenZeppelin Contracts Library Industry-standard battle-tested library for smart contract development in Solidity and Cairo, providing secure, reusable components for tokens, governance, access control, and more. Used by 9 of top 10 stablecoins and 10 of top 10 tokenized MMFs.
• Contracts Wizard Interactive web-based tool for generating smart contracts interactively, supporting ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155, and Governor templates with customization options. Targeted at developers building on EVM chains.
• Contracts MCP Model Context Protocol integration that enables AI coding agents to build secure smart contracts with context-aware secure development capabilities. Targeted at developers using AI coding assistants.
• Contracts Skills Open-source library that equips AI agents with secure development skills for smart contract development, available on GitHub. Targeted at AI coding agent workflows.
• Upgrades Plugins Plugins for Foundry and Hardhat that enable secure deployment and management of upgradeable smart contracts with proxy pattern support. Targeted at smart contract developers.
• Relayer Transaction API with secure key storage and transaction management, implementing policies and reliability mechanisms for onchain operations. Has processed over 40 million transactions. Targeted at onchain application teams.
• Monitor Pre-built templates for risk and behavior insights, detecting, alerting, and automatically resolving threats and anomalies in smart contract activity. Has triggered over 45 million monitoring alerts.
• UI Builder Tool for spinning up a user interface for deployed smart contracts, enabling rapid frontend development for onchain applications.
• Safe Utils Security tool for verifying Gnosis Safe transactions before signing, providing transaction safety verification for multisig wallet operations. Targeted at multisig wallet users and treasury managers.
• Access Control Tool for managing contract roles and permissions, providing role-based access control visualization and management for smart contracts.
• Defender Cloud-hosted security platform providing automated transaction execution, monitoring, and security operations for onchain applications. Includes Relayer, Monitor, UI Builder, and Safe Utils. Subscription-based with tiered plans and self-service onboarding.
• OpenZeppelin AI Auditor AI-powered security analysis tool that scales a decade of audit expertise across continuous code coverage. Uses repository-level reasoning to identify vulnerabilities beyond individual functions, with model-agnostic architecture. Targeted at security teams and protocol developers.
• Continuous Security Program Subscription-based engagement model providing always-on security coverage across the full development lifecycle with Architect (design validation), Build (secure foundations), Secure (continuous agent-augmented analysis), and Support (production monitoring) phases. Combines senior security researchers with AI Auditor.
• Smart Contract Security Audits Gold-standard code review services for smart contracts including ZKP audits, with elite researchers uncovering 700+ critical and high vulnerabilities and securing $110 billion in TVL across 900+ audits.
• Blockchain Infrastructure Security Audits Security assessments and audits for offchain infrastructure including Rust execution clients, Go/Geth, Op-Stack forks, zkEVM clients, Cosmos SDK, and custom virtual machines.
• ZKP Audits Security reviews for zero-knowledge proof systems covering circuit security, prover/verifier correctness, and L1/L2 interactions, with expertise in SNARKs, PLONK, KZG, FRI, and recursive proofs.
• daml-lint Rust-based static analysis scanner for Daml smart contracts with six detectors targeting conservation violations, unguarded division, non-deterministic ordering, and other Daml-specific vulnerability classes.
• daml-props Property-based testing framework written in pure Daml for generating random action sequences and shrinking failures to minimal reproductions, following QuickCheck and Echidna lineage.
• daml-verify Formal verification tool using Z3 prover to prove critical invariants including conservation, division safety, temporal ordering, and vault properties across all possible inputs.

Quantifiable outcome

• $250 billion in onchain value secured across protocols and institutions
• +5 more outcomes

Named customers24 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability7 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• PharosminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 29 January 2026Pharos announced OpenZeppelin as a security partner ahead of its mainnet launch. Collaboration includes blockchain audits, penetration testing, and real-time monitoring systems for enhanced security infrastructure.
• MidnightcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 March 2025OpenZeppelin hosted the Automated Market Maker Challenge hackathon for Midnight's ecosystem. Midnight is a ZK identity platform that partnered with OpenZeppelin for developer ecosystem expansion and security tooling integration.
• ArbitrumcoreTechnology or IntegrationOpenZeppelin provides contracts library implementation for Stylus, DAO security proposal reviews, and Relayer/Monitor support for Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova & Arbitrum Sepolia.
• StarkwarecoreTechnology or IntegrationOpenZeppelin provides contracts library implementation for Cairo, supporting Starknet's ecosystem with battle-tested smart contract components.
• Matterlabs (ZKsync)coreTechnology or IntegrationOpenZeppelin secures ZKsync releases and reduces response time with comprehensive security support for the ZKsync ecosystem.
• CompoundcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOpenZeppelin secures all Compound DAO governance proposals and incidents, providing continuous security monitoring and incident response.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights1 record

Direct peers

• Zellic: Zellic is a smart contract and blockchain security firm specializing in audits and applied cryptography research. Emerging direct competitor to OpenZeppelin, particularly for ZK-rollup and Layer 2 security engagements.
• Sigma Prime: Sigma Prime is a blockchain security and infrastructure firm known for Lighthouse (Ethereum consensus client) and core protocol audits. Direct competitor in blockchain infrastructure and Layer 1 security engagements.
• Spearbit: Spearbit is a network of independent top-tier security researchers competing in the smart contract audit market. Direct competitor for high-end audit engagements, particularly on complex DeFi protocols and ZK systems.
• Quantstamp: Quantstamp is a smart contract security auditing firm offering audits and an automated security scanning platform. Direct competitor to OpenZeppelin across standard DeFi audits and protocol security reviews.
• Halborn: Halborn is an end-to-end blockchain security firm offering smart contract audits and penetration testing. Direct competitor to OpenZeppelin's audit and Continuous Security Program offerings.
• Runtime Verification: Runtime Verification is a formal verification and security firm with deep Ethereum expertise (EVM formalization, Casper FFG verification). Direct competitor in formal verification services overlapping with OpenZeppelin's higher-assurance engagements.
• Trail of Bits: Trail of Bits is a premier smart contract and blockchain security firm offering audits, formal verification, and security tooling. Direct competitor to OpenZeppelin's audit practice, serving similar DeFi protocols and Layer 2 networks with comparable service offerings.
• Consensys Diligence: Consensys Diligence is the smart contract auditing arm of Consensys and a foundational competitor in smart contract security. Directly competes with OpenZeppelin's audit services across the Ethereum ecosystem, with MythX as a competing static analysis platform.
• Certora: Certora specializes in formal verification of smart contracts using its Certora Prover. A direct competitor to OpenZeppelin's formal verification and ZKP audit capabilities, particularly for high-assurance DeFi protocols.
• ChainSecurity: ChainSecurity (acquired by PwC) is a blockchain security firm specializing in smart contract audits and formal verification. Direct competitor to OpenZeppelin, particularly in formal verification and protocol security.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/openzeppelin
• GitHubgithub.com/OpenZeppelin
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/openzeppelin

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles6 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors9 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments2 records

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about OpenZeppelin