What are the Actual Flaws in Important Smart Contracts (and How Can We Find Them)?

Abstract

An important problem in smart contract security is understanding the likelihood and criticality of discovered, or potential, weaknesses in contracts. In this paper we provide a summary of Ethereum smart contract audits performed for 23 professional stakeholders, avoiding the common problem of reporting issues mostly prevalent in low-quality contracts. These audits were performed at a leading company in blockchain security, using both open-source and proprietary tools, as well as human code analysis performed by professional security engineers. We categorize 246 individual defects, making it possible to compare the severity and frequency of different vulnerability types, compare smart contract and non-smart contract flaws, and to estimate the efficacy of automated vulnerability detection approaches.