Kerberus acquires Pocket Universe to develop a dedicated crypto antivirus
Kerberus Cyber Security announced the acquisition of Refract, the team behind the popular Pocket Universe browser extension, in a seven-figure deal. The move is intended to broaden Kerberus’s protection offerings and accelerate development of a purpose-built antivirus for crypto users.
As part of the integration plan, Kerberus will fold Pocket Universe into its own Sentinel3 security extension, extend coverage beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains to include Solana, and work toward a downloadable antivirus-style product that runs on users’ devices.
Pocket Universe founders Justin Phu and Nishan Samarasinghe will step back from day-to-day operations to pursue new projects, while continuing to provide support to the Kerberus team. Industry figure Ran Neuner has also joined the effort as a strategic adviser and distribution partner.
Kerberus — launched in 2023 and previously known as MintDefense — provides real-time transaction scanning and automated wallet defenses. Company leaders say they built the platform after seeing people lose significant sums to scams and malware, and that their goal is to stop losses caused by device-level threats as well as social-engineering attacks.
Kerberus executives described the planned antivirus as a lightweight, installable protection layer for crypto users. Their chief technology officer estimated a minimum development timeline of roughly four months to reach an initial minimal viable product, noting some intellectual property is already in place.
Security experts observe that the crypto ecosystem currently lacks a single, unified antivirus solution. Instead, defenses exist in separate layers — wallet protections, protocol-level safeguards and monitoring services — and experts say coordinated coverage across those layers is needed because, unlike traditional computing, on-chain transactions cannot be reversed once signed and executed.
With the acquisition and the advisory addition, Kerberus says it aims to scale its user base and improve trust and safety infrastructure across Web3 by combining browser-level protections with its existing transaction-scanning technology.
