Cheap Smart Contract Audits: Lowering the Cost Without Compromise

The cost of smart contract audits can be a significant barrier for many developers, especially those just starting out. A typical smart contract audit can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 or more.

However, there are ways to lower the cost without compromising the quality of the audit. By leveraging open-source tools and frameworks, developers can save money on audit costs.

Some smart contract platforms, like Binance Smart Chain, offer free or low-cost audit services to help developers get started. This can be a huge help for those on a tight budget.

By being more efficient and organized in the audit process, developers can also reduce costs. This can be achieved by providing clear and concise documentation, and by being prepared for the audit process.

A cheap smart contract audit is essentially a review of the code and functionality of a smart contract to identify potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses.

Auditing is conducted by specialized firms or individuals with expertise in blockchain technology and smart contract development.

The goal of a smart contract audit is to ensure the reliability, security, and correctness of the smart contract code.

Auditors carefully analyze the code line by line, checking for potential issues such as programming errors or logical flaws that could be exploited by malicious actors.

A cheap smart contract audit helps minimize the chances of contract failures, hacks, or financial losses.

Through the auditing process, potential issues are identified, documented, and communicated to the contract developers, helping them understand the risks associated with their smart contract.

Smart contract auditing is a critical step in the development lifecycle of blockchain-based applications.

Establishing clear functional requirements is crucial for a successful smart contract audit. This involves defining the contract's purpose, intended functionality, and any specific requirements or standards that need to be considered during the audit process.

Proper preparation saves both time and money. To ensure you gain the most from your audit, consider the following steps: establishing clear functional requirements, preparing a detailed technical description, setting up a development environment, developing comprehensive unit tests, and following code style and best practices.

Having a comprehensive technical overview is essential for audit preparation. This should cover programming languages and technologies utilized, instructions for deployment, test-running instructions, and any relevant non-functional requirements.

A clear understanding of the contract's purpose and intended functionality is necessary for effective development, testing, and review. Even if your project isn't ready for a professional audit, having these measures in place helps with internal reviews, bug bounties, and maintaining a productive development environment.

To ensure a thorough audit, it's essential to define the scope of the engagement. This involves understanding the contract's purpose, intended functionality, and any specific requirements or standards that need to be considered during the audit process.

Gathering relevant documentation and specifications is a crucial aspect of pre-audit preparation. Auditors require access to the contract's codebase, technical specifications, architectural diagrams, and any existing security requirements or guidelines.

Here are some essential tools for a smart contract audit:

By using these tools and following the necessary steps, you can ensure a thorough and effective smart contract audit.

Selecting the right audit firm is crucial to ensure a thorough and reliable assessment of your smart contract's security and compliance. Consider the experience and expertise of auditors, the reputation of the firm, and cost considerations.

A reputable smart contracts auditing company should have a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages. They should have a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

Independence and impartiality are essential to ensure the highest level of integrity and credibility, so look for a company that maintains independence from the organizations or projects they are auditing.

Selecting the right audit firm can be a daunting task, especially when considering the costs involved.

High initial fees are a common concern, with reputable firms charging thousands of dollars for basic audits.

This can be a considerable expense for early-stage projects or smaller contracts, making it essential to factor this cost into your budget.

Hidden costs can also arise, such as charges for additional testing or vulnerabilities found after a previous audit has been completed.

These unexpected fees can add up quickly, so it's crucial to understand what you're getting into before signing with a firm.

Audits can take time, potentially delaying your project launch and impacting your timeline.

Here are some key cost considerations to keep in mind:

If you're looking for ways to save on audit costs, there are a few options to consider.

Self-auditing can be a cost-effective approach, but it's time-consuming and prone to bias. You'll need to utilize static analysis tools, write comprehensive tests, and peer-review your code.

Freelance auditors can be found on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, offering competitive rates. Be sure to research their experience and reputation carefully.

Launchpad partnerships can also provide discounted rates for projects participating in their platform. Some web3 launchpads collaborate with specific audit firms to offer these discounts.

Here are three lower-cost alternatives to consider:

While these options can be cost-effective, they have limitations. Freelance auditors or emerging firms might not have the same expertise or comprehensive audit packages as established firms. Self-auditing can miss critical vulnerabilities due to inherent biases and limited perspectives.

Here are the top smart contract audit companies that have made a name for themselves in the industry.

ChainSecurity has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

To ensure compliance with regulations, ChainSecurity has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

ChainSecurity offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

Aurum offers comprehensive code reviews to ensure contracts are secure and efficient.

Their team has expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Aurum has a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

The company has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

To ensure transparency, Aurum provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

Certik has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

Certik offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

Hacken has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

Their team has expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Hacken offers comprehensive code reviews to ensure contracts are secure and efficient.

The company has a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

To ensure transparency, Hacken provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

Quantstamp has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

Quantstamp offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

OpenZeppelin has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

Their team has expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

OpenZeppelin offers comprehensive code reviews to ensure contracts are secure and efficient.

The company has a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

To ensure transparency, OpenZeppelin provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

PeckShield has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

PeckShield offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

Chainalysis has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

Their team has expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Chainalysis offers comprehensive code reviews to ensure contracts are secure and efficient.

The company has a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

To ensure transparency, Chainalysis provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

RugDoc has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

RugDoc offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

Coinfirm has a strong understanding of relevant regulations and ensures contracts adhere to necessary compliance standards.

Their team has expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Coinfirm offers comprehensive code reviews to ensure contracts are secure and efficient.

The company has a track record of successfully auditing and assessing smart contracts across various industries.

To ensure transparency, Coinfirm provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

DeFi Safety has a team of highly skilled professionals with expertise in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and relevant programming languages.

Their security and code review process is thorough, ensuring that contracts are robust and secure.

DeFi Safety offers ongoing support, including monitoring the contract's performance and assisting with any necessary updates or modifications.

The company has a positive reputation within the blockchain community and provides clear and transparent reports detailing their findings.

PeckShield is a well-established smart contract audit company known for its expertise in blockchain security and vulnerability analysis.

Their extensive experience in conducting security and code reviews is impressive, and their industry knowledge and compliance understanding are exceptional.

PeckShield guarantees independence and impartiality in their audits, ensuring unbiased assessments.

They prioritize transparency and reporting, providing comprehensive explanations of their findings.

With continuous monitoring and support, PeckShield assists clients in maintaining the security and integrity of their smart contracts.

PeckShield has built a strong reputation and has references that testify to their quality and reliability.

A comprehensive methodology is essential for a cheap smart contract audit. This involves a thorough examination of the contract's codebase, including a line-by-line review and manual code review.

Auditors employ a combination of manual code review and automated analysis tools to identify potential vulnerabilities and ensure the contract's security. This includes scrutinizing the code for common programming errors, such as reentrancy or integer overflow.

A comprehensive audit methodology should cover code review, vulnerability assessment, and compliance considerations. This includes assessing the contract's interactions with other contracts, external systems, or oracles.

Some of the key components of a comprehensive methodology include:

A thorough audit process should involve a combination of manual and automated testing methodologies, including unit testing, integration testing, fuzz testing, and formal verification. This helps identify bugs, logic errors, or unintended consequences at a granular level, allowing for targeted fixes and improvements.

The smart contract auditing process involves several stages, starting with a pre-audit phase where the auditor evaluates the development environment for any potential compilation problems.

Our team utilizes various tools for Solidity smart contracts, including Slither, Mythril, Solgraph, Echidna, and Mythx, which help identify potential vulnerabilities and generate detailed reports.

In the pre-audit stage, we execute the provided tests and verify both the functional and non-functional requirements.

Here's a list of tools used for Solidity smart contracts:

The audit process continues with a line-by-line review, where we meticulously examine each segment of your code for all possible vulnerabilities, including issues outlined in the SWC registry, data and price manipulations, access violations, flash loans, and complex vulnerabilities emerging from contract interactions.

The Process of Smart Contract Auditing is a thorough and meticulous process that involves several stages.

Smart contract auditing involves important stages of analysis, each playing a crucial role in creating a seamless contract.

The first stage is the Pre-Audit, where the auditor evaluates the development environment for potential compilation problems and verifies the functional and non-functional requirements.

During the Pre-Audit, the auditor uses tools like Slither, Mythril, Solgraph, Echidna, Mythx, Clippy, Cargo-udeps, Cargo-audit, and Cargo-geiger to identify potential vulnerabilities.

In the Pre-Audit stage, the auditor executes the provided tests and verifies both the functional and non-functional requirements.

The second stage is the Line-By-Line Review, where the auditor conducts a meticulous manual review of the contract's codebase.

During the Line-By-Line Review, the auditor examines each segment of the code for all possible vulnerabilities, including issues outlined in the SWC registry, data and price manipulations, access violations, flash loans, and complex vulnerabilities emerging from contract interactions.

The auditor checks the code against critical aspects common to smart contract programming languages, including default visibility, integer overflow and underflow, outdated compiler version, access control and authorization, assets integrity, and data consistency.

The auditor uses more than 50 language-specific parameters for EVM (Solidity, Vyper, Yul) and Rust-based contracts (Solana, Near, CosmWas) to identify potential vulnerabilities.

The auditor thoroughly assesses the test coverage, developing and implementing additional cases to accommodate all potential positive and negative scenarios.

The auditor intentionally devises configurations and runs associated tests to replicate problems that can only be identified with incorrect configurations of dependent contracts.

Each issue is classified as either Passed, Failed, or Not Related.

The auditor employs various techniques to ensure the contract's security and reliability, including manual code review, automated tools and analysis, security standards and best practices, and logic and design patterns.

Here are some of the techniques used during the code review:

In the final step of the audit process, our team comes together to formulate a detailed report that covers all the crucial issues and vulnerabilities we've identified. This report is a comprehensive review of the audit, providing you with verified information to help bolster your smart contract's security and dependability.

The report is a valuable resource for external stakeholders, including your community and investors, who can use it to make informed decisions. This is especially important for investors who want to understand the security and reliability of their investment.

Our team's intensive cross-review of the findings is what makes this report so valuable, as it ensures that all the information is accurate and up-to-date. This report is a critical tool for you to use in your ongoing efforts to secure and improve your smart contract.

Reentrancy attacks are a major vulnerability in smart contracts, allowing attackers to repeatedly enter and exit a contract, draining funds or causing unexpected behavior. The notorious DAO hack in 2016 is a prime example of a reentrancy attack.

To prevent reentrancy attacks, ensure that contract state changes occur before any external calls, and implement the "checks-effects-interactions" pattern to mitigate reentrancy risks.

Integer overflows and underflows can lead to unexpected results, allowing attackers to exploit arithmetic operations. The infamous "King of the Ether" incident in 2016 demonstrated the consequences of unchecked integer arithmetic.

Validate and handle arithmetic operations carefully to avoid unintended behaviors due to integer overflow or underflow.

Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks can disrupt contract functionality by consuming excessive computational resources or exploiting inefficiencies in the contract's logic. The Fomo3D game on the Ethereum network experienced a DoS attack, causing significant congestion and delays.

Analyze the contract's design for potential DoS vulnerabilities, such as gas-guzzling operations or external dependencies that could block contract execution.

Insecure random number generation can be exploited by attackers, impacting the fairness of applications like gambling or decentralized games.

Token security audits are crucial to identify vulnerabilities in smart contracts. They help prevent errors and ensure the security of the contract.

A token security audit can include various types of audits, such as Overflow Audit, Race Conditions Audit, and Permission Vulnerability Audit. These audits can be categorized under different classes, such as Security Design Audit and Denial of Service Audit.

Best practices for smart contract audits include following a set of guidelines to minimize errors. These practices can help you stay ahead of vulnerabilities and save time and money in the project.

Here are some common types of token security audits:

Following best practices for Smart Contract Audits is crucial to minimize errors and vulnerabilities.

There is no possible way to ensure an error-free build during the building phase of any software.

Best practices can help keep you ahead of the vulnerabilities and save a lot of time and money involved in the project.

These practices are essential for Smart Contract Audits.

Let's dive into the details of each one of them.

Token security is a top priority for any project. Extractor, a service offered by Hacken, continuously monitors your smart contract for potential threats, ensuring real-time detection and response.

To ensure the security of your token, it's essential to conduct regular security audits. These audits can help identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in your smart contract, allowing you to take corrective action before an attacker can exploit them.

A token security audit typically includes a range of checks, such as overflow audits, reentrancy attack audits, and replay attack audits. These checks can help identify issues like arithmetic accuracy deviations and uninitialized storage pointer vulnerabilities.

Here are some common types of token security audits:

By conducting regular token security audits, you can help ensure the integrity and security of your token and protect your users from potential threats.

In the realm of security, it's essential to have a clear understanding of what's at stake. A data breach can have devastating consequences, with 60% of small businesses folding within six months of an attack.

Regular security audits can help identify vulnerabilities before they're exploited. This is especially true for businesses with multiple entry points, such as a company with 12 employees and 5 branches.

Two-factor authentication can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access. It's a simple yet effective measure that can be implemented across various systems, including email and login portals.

A strong password policy is also crucial in preventing unauthorized access. This includes using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters, as seen in a company's password policy that requires a minimum of 12 characters.

In the event of a security breach, having a incident response plan in place can make all the difference. This plan should include steps for containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activities.