How to Perform Ethereum Smart Contract Audit?

The digital world has been a risky space for money at all times. Smart contract technology is adapted to rely on different programming languages and computer systems to manage customary contract provisions. These contracts limit the risk posed by a malicious actor and do not require a reliable intermediary. Ethereum is an innovative platform for organizations to efficiently design and manage crypto contracts. Yet, it isn’t easy to trust any contract without the Ethereum smart contract audit.

Let’s delve into Ethereum smart contract audits, how to perform them, their security flaws, and the best ways to mitigate them.

What is an Ethereum Smart Contract?

There has never been a software product with no vulnerabilities in it. Smart contracts, originally a computer code built on blockchain technology, unfortunately, do not have any differences. 

Ethereum is a blockchain-centered, open-source, distributed computing platform with crypto contract functionality. Once deployed onto the Ethereum platform, the crypto contracts are fixed, focusing primarily on security.

The smart contract design comprises a set of rules with the If-This-Then-That structure. When the involved parties meet the rules set, the contract is implicitly enforced without manual intervention. The manual audit process is similar to auditing an application source code line.

The crypto contract audit method checks the code that validates the smart contract’s terms so that experts can swiftly identify flaws before deploying crypto contracts using such an audit.

In 2016, a study by experts identified vulnerabilities – 34,200 in total in Ethereum Smart Contracts. The tool was developed after the company’s hacking team found bugs. Consequently, the ICO seized more than $50m.

These figures give an insight into its immense size and highlight how necessary it is to conduct a crypto contract security audit and eliminate spurious results.

How to Conduct a Smart Contract Audit?

The smart contracting industry recurrently faces several challenges, and it is essential for contracts to be performance-optimal and audited properly. The full process may be helpful if you’ve never completed a smart contract security audit. Let’s see how to create smart contracts and audit them.

Project Review + Preparation process

The comprehensive Ethereum smart contract audit process begins with a far-reaching manual review of the project’s smart contract code and the full background of making the contract. Here a discussion session with the contract developers is held to gain a comprehensive review.

Next, a threat profile of the contract is prepared, along with a review plan that will be used to go about the audit process.

Scanning

Based on the plan, business logic, and threat profile, the audit process begins with a hybrid approach. Initially, the static assessment of the contract is performed with automated tools. Then, the dynamic security vulnerabilities assessment is performed by manually attacking every threat profile member and providing a vulnerability details review.

Next, the smart contract auditor performs a dynamic assessment at the component level and then moves up, assessing the entire program.

Auditing report

After the assessment is completed, an extensive list of every vulnerability in the smart contract is given in the final audit report, with detailed remediation-focused steps.

Is the Smart Contract Audit Cost High?

Smart contract audit service cost is high regardless of spite many key factors: 

• The most crucial factors can determine if an organization is using its project team or deploying outsourcers.
• The costs associated with outsourcing blockchain security audits and preparing a vulnerability report may be expensive, but identifying vulnerabilities is much more efficient because the in-house team has expertise in the blockchain.
• Submitting a code for comprehensive security assessments via auditing websites is now easier.

Smart contract audit services are essential for your business to reveal malicious attack vectors and prevent reentrancy attacks.

Why is smart contract security audits essential?

Now, security issues are focal. Poor security or improper conduct exists, as using chain networks to develop smart solutions lead to extraordinary costs. Furthermore, small code errors may end in large thefts. For example, DAO seized over $50 million in cryptocurrency. Business owners are concerned about deploying Smart Contracts because they are irreversible.

To stay afloat, they should ensure their smart contract goes through penetration testing and all the stages of smart contracts audit, from manual analysis to automated audit, before generating the initial audit.

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