Audit of Smart Contracts and the Role of AI in the Audit

Smart Contract is an integral part of Web 3.0 ecosystem. In this article, I am not going to define what is smart contract , but try to elaborate how to audit a smart contract and how AI can help us to do so.

Auditing a smart contract is a critical step in ensuring its security, functionality, and robustness. Auditing involves thoroughly reviewing a smart contract's code, structure, and documentation, to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities, performance issues, and deviations from best practices. To audit a smart contract, follow these steps:

1. Preparation:

??a. Familiarize yourself with the project details, goals, and requirements.

??b. Understand the project's tokenomics, if applicable.

??c. Obtain the source code and documentation of the smart contract.

??d. Set up the necessary development environment.

2. Manual code review:

??a. Read the entire smart contract code.

??b. Check for adherence to coding best practices, such as code organization, modularity, readability, and comments.

??c. Identify any outdated or unsupported language versions, libraries or dependencies.

??d. Compare the smart contract's functionalities with the project requirements to identify discrepancies.

??e. Focus on security-critical sections, such as access control, funds handling, and token transfers.

??f. Evaluate the smart contract's efficiency, gas usage, and performance.

3. Automated analysis:

??a. Use static analysis tools (e.g., MythX, Slither) to automatically check the smart contract's code for common vulnerabilities and code quality issues.

??b. Use dynamic analysis tools (e.g., Echidna, Harvey) to scan for vulnerabilities and test the smart contract's behavior in arbitrary input scenarios.

4. Test coverage:

??a. Review the existing test suite or write tests if they don't exist.

??b. Ensure that all significant code paths, edge cases, and important functionalities are covered by tests.

??c. Execute tests using tools such as Truffle or Hardhat, and analyze test results.

5. Formal verification (optional):

??a. Use formal verification tools (e.g., Klab, Certora) to prove that the smart contract behaves according to its specification.

??b. Write property-based tests to check whether the contract's critical behaviors adhere to the specified conditions.

??c. This step is beneficial for complex or highly critical smart contracts.

6. Real-life scenarios and fuzz testing:

??a. Simulate real-life contract interactions and random inputs in a test environment to uncover unforeseen vulnerabilities.

??b. Attempt to exploit the contract using known attack patterns common in the blockchain ecosystem.

7. Review of audit findings:

??a. Document identified vulnerabilities, issues, and recommendations.

??b. Collaborate with the development team to fix the issues and implement improvements.

8. Re-audit if necessary:

??a. After developers have addressed the findings, perform a review to ensure that all vulnerabilities and issues have been resolved adequately.

Remember that an audit is not a guarantee against all vulnerabilities, but rather a vital part of the overall assessment and improvement process of your smart contract. It helps in identifying and resolving potential issues before launching your smart contract on the main network.

Role of AI in Smart Contract Auditing

AI can significantly contribute to smart contract auditing by automating and improving various aspects of the process. Smart contracts, which usually run on blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, need thorough auditing to ensure code quality, security, and efficiency. Here are some ways AI can help with smart contract auditing:

1. Automatic code review: AI algorithms can parse the source code of smart contracts, detecting potential security vulnerabilities or inefficiencies. By training on vast repositories of code and known vulnerabilities, the AI can suggest improvements or corrections to the code.

2. Formal verification: AI can help automate the process of formal verification, which mathematically proves that a smart contract behaves as expected. This improves confidence in the smart contract's reliability and security.

3. Predictive analysis: Using machine learning techniques, AI can learn from past smart contract failures, exploits, or attacks, and predict potential issues in new contracts. This can help prevent similar situations in the future.

4. Optimization suggestions: AI-powered tools can provide suggestions on how to optimize the code to ensure it is more efficient in terms of transaction costs, reducing the overall deployment and execution expenses.

5. Continuous monitoring: AI can continuously monitor deployed smart contracts for any abnormalities or suspicious activities. This enables proactive responses to potential threats or issues, reducing response times and damage.

6. Automated testing: AI can help generate test cases and automate the testing process, ensuring the smart contract code is thoroughly tested in various scenarios before deployment. This minimizes the risk of unexpected behavior or security breaches once the contract is live.

7. Natural language processing (NLP): AI can leverage NLP techniques to understand the intent and context of the smart contract's written documentation, providing stakeholders with valuable insights into the contract design and requirements.

8. Collaborative auditing: AI can augment human auditors' expertise by providing a wealth of knowledge and resources, improving the overall quality and speed of the auditing process.

By utilizing AI in the smart contract auditing process, organizations can achieve faster, more accurate, and cost-effective audits while reducing the potential for human error and maintaining trust in the blockchain ecosystem.

Conclusion : In the age of generative AI like ChatGPT4 or AutoGPT, manual auditing of smart contracts are not advisable as chances are to miss out something important from the point of view of cyber security. So it is important to use the capacity of AI as a tool with mix of personal experience to complete the audit of smart contract.

Disclaimer : These are views of author who is founder of Elite Web3 Forum and conversant of cyber security issues and auditing of smart contract. These views are personal in nature and no way connected to any organization.