Hacken co-founder Yevheniia Broshevan on Privacy 2.0 and the AI Frontier
Yevheniia Broshevan co-founded the cybersecurity company Hacken in 2017, but her journey into digital defence started long before Web3 had a name. From studying cryptography and risk modelling in Ukraine to working with Ripple and Stellar during their formative years, she has witnessed many key transitions in how we think about trust, privacy, and digital infrastructure. Today, she is navigating a new chapter shaped by artificial intelligence, evolving regulations, and growing demands on decentralised systems.
“I never wanted to do anything else,” she says. “Cybersecurity was my path from day one. I started in university labs calculating risk models for nuclear power plants. We were applying cryptography to real-world threats.”
That passion for security evolved alongside her early discovery of Bitcoin. In 2014, a professor mentioned it in passing. Broshevan didn’t just get curious. She dove in. By the end of the year, she was working on outsourced development projects for Ripple and Stellar. “They weren’t big names yet. In Ukraine, most people hadn’t even heard of crypto,” she recalls.
But the work led to meetups and conferences, including informal hackathons where early leaders like Charles Hoskinson would show up to speak. At one such event in Odessa, she received her first Bitcoin from a fellow attendee. “He was trying to live entirely on crypto, so I paid for lunch in fiat and he sent me Bitcoin. That was my first real use case.”
A few years later, she helped launch Hacken. The idea was simple: connect hackers and blockchain projects in a transparent, collaborative marketplace. “We wanted to build a bug bounty platform specifically for Web3,” she says. “Not just one-off audits, but a continuous, trust-based relationship.”
Hacken began with a live hacking event in Kyiv. Twenty researchers from thirteen countries were flown in. Teams of white-hat hackers tested live projects while founders watched vulnerabilities get reported in real time. The ICO followed, and the platform was born.
“We raised a couple of million dollars, launched the MVP, and quickly found ourselves helping friends with phishing attacks and scam websites. That’s when we realised the demand for services went far beyond bug bounties.”
Today, Hacken is a team of over 150 people spread across more than 20 countries. Its core business is smart contract audits, penetration testing, and infrastructure security. Clients range from DeFi protocols to crypto exchanges and regulatory agencies. Its bug bounty platform still runs, with over 4550,000 hackers enrolled and clients like the Ethereum Foundation onboard.
But the vision has grown. “We’re not just chasing bugs. We’re helping build the compliance layer for crypto,” Broshevan explains. Hacken works closely with regulators in the UAE and Europe, offering compliance dashboards, monitoring tools, and incident reporting frameworks. Her co-founder, Dmytro Budorin, is now based in the UAE, and they are expanding into North America.
“It used to be that crypto was the Wild West. Now, every jurisdiction wants annual audits, risk disclosures, and security guarantees,” she says. “We help make that possible without compromising the ethos of decentralisation.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also reshaping the field. Broshevan will speak on a panel about the intersection of privacy and AI at the Privacy 2.0 summit in Toronto. “AI changes everything,” she says. “It changes what data means. It changes what surveillance looks like. It even changes what it means to trust code.”
Although some claim that AI will replace human auditors, she doesn’t see it that way. “Automated tools can flag known patterns, sure. But the real job is understanding risk. That’s not something you can outsource to a machine.”
Instead, she sees AI as a support tool, not a replacement. “What we do is nuanced. Companies need a human touch to help navigate emerging threats. AI might scan code faster, but it doesn’t understand consequences.”
As for running a globally distributed company, she admits the transition wasn’t easy. “In 2022, we were all in one office in Kyiv. Forty of us, sitting together. Now we’re remote, across time zones, languages, and cultures. It’s a challenge, but it’s also our strength.”
Looking ahead, Hacken is preparing for growth in the US and Canada. Broshevan recently attended the Bermuda Digital Finance Forum and will speak in Toronto next. “We’re growing into regulated markets because privacy and compliance are converging. Web3 needs both to thrive.”
Her advice to founders? Focus on the real problems. “Buzzwords fade. Compliance doesn’t. Risk doesn’t. And the cost of getting privacy wrong will only grow.”
From nuclear systems in Ukraine to auditing smart contracts across the globe, Yevheniia Broshevan is helping define what trust looks like in a decentralised, AI-aware future.
