Smart Contract Audit Methodology
A transparent audit workflow for teams that need manual security review, tool-assisted analysis, clear findings, remediation support, and a final report.
Audit Workflow
The process is structured, but each audit adapts to the codebase, ecosystem, and assets at risk.
Scoping
Confirm repositories, commit hashes, contracts, networks, exclusions, documentation, known risks, and disclosure requirements.
Architecture review
Understand assets at risk, trust boundaries, privileged roles, external dependencies, and the intended system invariants.
Automated analysis
Use static analysis, tests, fuzzing, symbolic execution, or custom checks where they improve coverage. Tools supplement manual review.
Manual code review
Trace value movement, access control, state transitions, external calls, upgrade paths, and chain-specific execution behavior.
Threat modeling
Model attackers, operators, integrators, governance, keepers, relayers, oracles, bridges, and market actors.
Business-logic analysis
Review assumptions that tools cannot infer: accounting, incentives, liquidation, governance, cross-chain state, and protocol economics.
Adversarial testing
Create targeted tests or reproductions for suspicious paths, edge cases, and exploit hypotheses.
Classification
Rank issues by practical impact, likelihood, exploitability, and remediation priority.
Reporting
Document findings with affected code, impact, remediation guidance, and context that engineers can use.
Remediation support
Answer implementation questions and review fixes against a new commit when included in scope.
Final report
Prepare a private or public report according to the agreed disclosure model.
Manual review comes first
Automated tooling can reveal known patterns, suspicious code, and edge cases. It cannot fully understand governance intent, economic invariants, cross-chain trust, oracle manipulation, or the business logic that makes a protocol valuable.
CTDSEC uses tools to increase coverage, then relies on manual security review to decide whether behavior is exploitable, meaningful, and worth fixing before launch.
Methodology deliverable
Every audit should leave the team with findings, context, remediation guidance, and a clear path to fix verification.
Ready for a focused smart contract audit?
Share your repository, target network, language, and launch timeline. CTDSEC will review the scope and respond with practical next steps.