Zebec received an AA security rating for CertiK's Skynet platform after completing five independent audits, placing the Solana-based payment protocol among the many higher-ranking DeFi projects currently monitored on the platform. CertiK listed Zebec with a rating of 86.9.
Zebec's earlier incident illustrates external risk, not contract failure. No guarantee – and no complete risk picture
Source: Certick Skynet
The audit history shows three Rust program audits and two additional security assessments. In the five reports, CertiK recorded eight findings, including one major issue related to centralization risk, two logical problems with medium severity, two minor issues, and five information items. Zebec resolved six findings from the audits and confirmed two others. CertiK has not reported any vulnerabilities of critical severity.
Zebec's earlier incident highlights external risk, not contract failure
Zebec's published incident history shows no direct exploitation of its streaming comparison logic. The most visible security event occurred in December 2022, when an attacker compromised a Raydium liquidity pool containing greater than $2 million of the legacy Zebec token. Zebec said core contracts weren’t affected and remaining liquidity had been withdrawn.
This distinction is essential for a payroll system. The risk was within the liquidity location, not the payroll code. It also shows that DeFi security often fails with integrations relatively than the core logic being audited.
Zebec operates in a distinct segment that mixes real-time payroll, stablecoin settlement, and on-chain treasury tools. Many competitors – including older crypto payroll platforms – don’t publish smart contract audits and as an alternative depend on centralized custody, off-chain ledgers and bank-based settlement tools.
This approach reduces on-chain risk but increases custody risk as a platform controls users' funds and has operational responsibility for compliance, asset segregation and settlement timing.
In this context, a public, multi-year audit trail gives Zebec a stronger position of transparency than competing models that prevent users from observing how settlement logic works or whether there’s collateral on withdrawals and upgrades. For employers or DAO treasuries that prioritize programmability and auditability, the AA rating adds more weight to platform selection.
No guarantee – and no complete risk picture
A CertiK rating just isn’t a security certificate and the AA rating doesn’t signal immunity to future exploits.
It means something narrower:
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the code evaluated through the audits didn’t have any critical vulnerabilities,
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Most of the issues found have been fixed and
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Project maturity and community metrics support continuous observability.
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The following just isn’t covered:
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Risk from third-party integrations,
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token liquidity risk,
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Centralization of the upgrade path,
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Governance capture or
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Regulatory uncertainty surrounding payroll processing using stablecoins.
These areas lie outside the scrutiny lens and remain key risks for any DeFi payment protocol.
The rating comes as Zebec moves beyond web-based payroll into the U.S. banking industry. By partnering with NatPay, a US payroll processor, Zebec's payroll layer provides a FedNow-enabled workflow that uses standard NACHA files to deliver wages with quick payroll.
For institutional users, the mixture of ISO 20022-compliant messaging, audited settlement logic, and real-time clearing changes the safety profile: protocol reliability becomes a requirement for compliance relatively than a marketing function.
