Abachi is dedicated to producing quality, reliable products for its investors and clients. For this reason, the commitment was made early-on to insist upon professional audits of each smart contract to ensure both security and efficiency. From token redemptions to staking protocols, the Abachi team endeavours to leave nothing to chance, and as such, we have selected one of the most reputable and in-demand auditors: Paladin Blockchain Security. With a sterling reputation, considerable waitlist and ever-expanding clientele, Paladin is a tier-1 auditing service that has graciously partnered with Abachi to fast-track the audits of our protocol.
The term ‘audit’ may still be something of a mystery to some of our investors, and today, we aim to explore this concept and define some of its key features and benefits. Companies that audit decentralized finance protocols generally consist of specialists and developers with extensive experience in the field of blockchain technology. Their experience and knowledge allow these auditors to act as an unbiased third-party, whose job is to verify that all aspects of a given contract are optimized and secure. There are many facets to this process, but in general, contract audits focus on three main categories:
- Investor Security – by performing an exhaustive review of the contract, the auditors can find and highlight potential areas of the code that might pose risks to investors.
- Protocol Security – a comprehensive audit of the contract can find and secure areas of the contract that might be vulnerable to malicious actions.
- Contract Optimization – auditors will test the code to search for bugs, gas inefficiencies, and give other feedback that can allow proactive improvement of the contract before it is released to the public.
The process of an audit is very much like the relationship between an author and an editor. Before a publication can go to press, a great deal of editing and revision is required, which involves a lot of communication and adjustment based on the feedback received. This can be very time-consuming, but when it comes to creating high quality material, painstaking details pay off big in the long-term. In the case of an auditing company like Paladin, the client will receive a full report of suggested improvements which are classified by their overall potential to harm the project.
Using this feedback, the developer then makes the necessary adjustments, and in some cases, may resubmit to the auditor for further evaluation. Once all of the necessary changes are made, an audit report is provided by the auditor, which discusses all suggested improvements, their severity and the resulting actions taken by the client. This detailed report is published for the public and the contract is then ready to be deployed. All of Abachi’s completed audit reports can be found here.
Investor Security:
This is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, as the OHM/Olympus trend brought about many scam projects that were simply created to steal funds from unsuspecting investors. Many of these projects did not go through the auditing process, and these ‘rug-pulls’ resulted in a lack of trust for new projects entering the ecosystem. This distrust can be mitigated considerably by a credible and thorough audit which ensures that no malicious code can be hidden within the deployed contract.
Protocol Security:
Contracts that are not properly constructed are vulnerable to the actions of malicious individuals. The most famous example of this is ‘The Hack’ of The DAO, where $60,000,000 of ETH was stolen by a hacker who was able to act upon vulnerabilities in the contract code. This event caused the entire ETH network to undergo a fork, and highlighted the need for thorough inspection of the code to eliminate potential exploitation.
Protocol Efficiency:
While arguably not as important as security, optimizing protocol efficiency can help to eliminate future issues related to things such as ‘gas.’ Smart Contracts can be incredible ‘gas guzzlers,’ and we recently saw an example of this in the form of a GameFi project that nearly paralyzed the Polygon Network. By examining the details of the code, companies such as Paladin are able to determine potential inefficiencies so that developers can make necessary changes before the code is published. An example of such a suggestion can be found below.
Smart Contracts are incredibly detailed and complex, and require a great deal of time and energy to perfect. While a team of developers may be able to produce an acceptable final product, the benefits of specialized and unbiased third-party auditors have made services such as Paladin an invaluable resource to Decentralized Finance Projects. In the end, ensuring security and efficiency of smart contracts can help to eliminate the potential for catastrophic events that can severely impact the present AND future prospects of a project. As we have mentioned many times before, Abachi is an ambitious project that requires a solid foundation to function at its best. By committing considerable time and resources to the process of professionally auditing each and every contract, Abachi is doing all that it can to guarantee success and long-term viability. We thank you for your continued patience and we welcome any and all comments and constructive suggestions within our protocol chat. We will see you at our staking launch, January 28th, 2022.
