Why a Smart Contract Audit is Vital and What is it on Earth?
Chances you hear Smart Contract Audit every now and then, but have you ever taken few minutes to understand the methodology behind it? Here…
Chances you hear Smart Contract Audit every now and then, but have you ever taken few minutes to understand the methodology behind it? Here is an entry-level article to provide you with more insights.
In our daily life when we buy goods or services the first thing, we care about is their quality. The more we pay the more we care about the quality. This theory applies to crypto assets as well. When we buy a crypto asset or a service provided by a DApp such as a DeFi app, we care about its quality.
For a physical object, we usually check its appearance, certificate of origin, expiration date, etc. to make sure its quality is fine. However, for a crypto asset or a service provided by a DApp, which has none of these, how can we make sure its quality is fine? The most reliable and feasible way is to read its audit report.
Modern industrial products are manufactured on assembly lines. They strictly follow specified processes and conform to the requirements of various standards. Therefore, these products can considerably eliminate errors or mistakes in hand-made products prior to the Industrial Revolution era.
A crypto asset or a service provided by a DApp is composed of smart contracts which are programmed code mainly written by human beings. It is a special product. However, this product is not made on assembly lines but has to be made individually by human beings at present. There are no standards or predefined processes for manufacturing such a product. Therefore, it may have errors or mistakes made by individual human beings. Even the same programmer who implements the same crypto asset’s design logic at different times may write different smart contracts with different qualities.
There are no mature utilities or equipment, which are often used to inspect industrial products, to inspect a crypto asset’s quality before it is deployed. Therefore, we have to largely rely on human beings’ manual work to inspect its quality.
Quite often, we hear news about or even experience product recalls after a product is delivered to customers. Product recalls happen when safety issues or defects of a product are discovered. Product recalls prevent customers from suffering further from potential risks, losses, or damages that might be caused by the discovered safety issues or defects.
However, crypto-assets that are issued on most blockchains cannot be recalled after they are deployed on-chain. If risks or bugs are discovered in a deployed crypto asset, customers who possess this crypto asset might have to suffer from losses in this crypto asset.
Why? It is because a crypto asset is implemented with smart contracts, and once smart contracts are deployed on a blockchain they will be tamper-proof and transactions under smart contracts will be irreversible.
This means that the only way to make a crypto asset secure is to make it secure and bug-free before it is deployed on a blockchain. To make this happen the most reliable way is to have a crypto asset’s smart contracts audited by professionals. In general,auditing the smart contract of a crypto asset is the first line to safeguard a customer’s crypto asset.
Smart contract auditing is an extensive review and thorough analysis of a smart contract-based project which can be a crypto asset, a service, or a DApp, etc. Auditing a smart contract is to discover potential issues, vulnerabilities, bugs, errors, etc in the code and work with the writer(s) of the contract to fix them.
A professional audit conducted by Fairyproof typically involves the following steps:
· Agreeing on the provenance of source code
· Running automated issue-scan tools
· Running symbolic verification tools
· Doing a manual analysis of the code
· Providing suggestions and bug fixes
· Iterating communications with project team
· Creating an official report
About the author:
Yuefei TAN, CEO of Fairyproof
About Fairyproof:
Fairyproof Tech is a blockchain security company, established in Jan 2021.
It was founded by a team with rich experience in smart contract programming and network security. The team members participated in initiating a number of draft standards in the Ethereum field, including ERC-1646, ERC-2569, ERC-2794, and EIP-3712, of which ERC-2569 was officially accepted by the Ethereum team.
The team participated in the launch and development of various Ethereum projects, including blockchain platforms, DAO organizations, on-chain data storage, decentralized exchanges, and conducted security audits of multiple projects which have been deployed on Ethereum. Based on its strong R&D capability and deep understanding of smart contract security, Fairyproof has developed comprehensive vulnerability tracking and security systems and tools.
Fairyproof Tech serves and works closely with customers by providing systematic solutions covering both “code vulnerabilities” and “logic vulnerabilities” and aims to provide customers with the best and most professional services.