Smart contracts are designed to make a profit, not a loss, right? But it is much easier to lose on low-quality smart contracts than on the use of any other solutions in the field of IT. Now we will explain why this can happen and how BeFund specialists help to avoid it.
Invariability of smart contracts
As you know, a smart contract is stored and executed in the blockchain system permanently and cannot be tampered with or changed. In reality, this is not entirely true, but in order to be able to make changes to the smart contract, special conditions should be specified before it is launched. In this case, the developers will be able to later edit the code, correct possible errors or supplement the contract with new terms. That is why only its owners and programmers whom it trusts should have access to smart contracts.
After all, there is really no way for attackers to harm your smart contract that is already on the blockchain and executed by the system. To do this, they will need to break not the smart contract, but, in fact, the blockchain system itself — this is such a difficult and costly task that it may be considered impossible.
But then why are there problems with smart contracts? It’s simple – most criminals do not operate after launch, but at the development stage. After all, it is much easier to build your own conditions unknown to customers into the code at the stage of its creation than to try to break the blockchain later. Audi is designed to identify and neutralize such “traps”.
Gas consumption
Another important point is the permanent fee for performing actions in the blockchain. Indeed, a few of the most common free functions are provided, but everything else requires cryptographic calculations, which means that it charges the owner of the smart contract in the form of gas. This also applies to the amount of information stored in the blockchain, so the longer your code is, the more expensive the check for its maintenance will be.
To create concise code, developers must have a certain experience that allows them to competently call the necessary functions for a lower fee. That is why the development of smart contracts should be trusted only to experienced developers, otherwise unpredictable costs are guaranteed. But in any case, auditing the smart contract before launch allows you to find problem areas and optimize the code.
Smart contract audit on Solidity
We already know why an audit is needed, and now we should find out how this important process takes place at the BeFund company. We usually undertake a review of at least 100 tapes of code formatted in Prettier. We include a maximum of three iterations with resending in the price of the service. However, we value the approach to each client and try to make any difficult task simple. Therefore, our managers will help you take all the necessary steps to prepare your smart contract for an audit.
Preparation of a smart contract
At this stage, communication with the customer is extremely important, because this is where the main questions are decided: what the smart contract should do and what goal it should achieve. After all, the correct understanding of the task is already half of its completion. That is why our specialists should have the following data before the audit:
- Terms of reference, on the basis of which this smart contract was developed;
- Technical description — the purpose and tasks of the smart contract, the roles of the parties, a description of the functions used in it, etc.;
- Covering the smart contract with unit tests from hardhat files sent by the customer. If the client is unable to provide these files, BeFund specialists will create them independently upon additional arrangements.
Smart contract code analysis
Unit testing allows you to immediately identify fundamental and critical errors and demonstrates the compliance of the code with the set goals. After such tests, we form the very first report for the client, based on which important changes can be made to resubmit the code for audit.
Next, the smart contract is automatically scanned. This stage is mistakenly considered ineffective among users, since it does not require special interventions from the developer. However, in reality, an automatic test is necessary, because over many years of development, artificial intelligence has memorized and learned to find the tricks of even the best hackers in the world. As for the primitive mistakes of inexperienced developers, robots detect them in seconds, which reduces the overall audit time. We use tools like Slither, Mythril, Solgraph, Echidna and others. Automatic verification in no way excludes auditing by developers.
And only after all possible automatic tests have been completed, BeFund specialists get down to business. Only at this stage can real problems with the security of smart contracts be identified, and the best solutions can be selected to fully achieve the goal of this software.
Final report
Our specialists create a detailed report that includes the results of automatic and manual checks. This report consists of a series of documents, where the information is structured according to degrees of importance for the best perception by the customer. All vulnerabilities found are presented in a gradation from the highest (critical) to minor. However, it should not be remembered that even the slightest inaccuracy can lead to fatal consequences. Therefore, any errors found must be corrected.
After the audit
That’s all. Now the customer has a detailed report on the state of the future smart contract, a list of dangers, tips and instructions, how all this can and should be corrected. It is worth noting that by default, BeFund, like other auditors, does not correct the code, but only provides recommendations for their elimination to the developers of the smart contract from the customer. However, if the situation with the smart contract code is unsatisfactory and the essence of the errors is alarming, the customer should review his business relationship with the current contractor. Especially if the audit finds someone’s selfish intentions in the code.
Today we talked about the audit of smart contracts on Solidity for the Ethereum blockchain, as the most popular among our clients. But a similar algorithm is completely valid for all smart contracts. So if you need a high-quality unbiased audit, welcome to BeFund!
