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Smart Contract Auditing & Security

In short

Smart contract auditing from a blockchain development house that hardens code before external review, fixes findings ourselves, and publishes the work.

1M+
developers use Solhint, our Solidity linter
250+
projects shipped since 2016
95+
protocols worked across
60+
networks
Trusted by teams building on-chain

A smart contract audit is a systematic security review of on-chain code (read line by line and as a whole system) to find the vulnerabilities and economic-logic flaws that drain funds before an attacker does. Smart contract auditing is the difference between launching a protocol and launching a target.

Most firms hand you a PDF of findings and walk away; Protofire doesn't. We are a blockchain development company that has shipped 250+ projects since 2016, and we audit the same kinds of systems we build: DeFi protocols, stablecoins, vaults, oracles, and RWA infrastructure. That means we can do the work a pure audit shop can't: harden your code before an external auditor ever sees it (pre-audit), fix the findings ourselves (remediation), and re-audit until it's clean. We also publish our work: see our completed audit reports.

We help DeFi protocols heading to mainnet, RWA issuers, and treasuries get through a security review with fewer findings and lower cost, backed by the same security-critical work we delivered for the BaFin-licensed Swarm Markets DEX and Armanino's Proof-of-Reserves platform. If you want, the same engineers who reviewed it can build or fix what's broken.

Six layers of engineering-led security

Protofire's security process runs from static analysis and threat modeling through published certification, with remediation at each stage.

01

Static Analysis & Linting

Solhint (1M+ developers) and automated tooling surface risky patterns, unchecked calls, and style violations before any manual work begins.
02

Threat Modeling

Mapping oracle attack surfaces, flash-loan scenarios, economic incentive breaks, and liquidation-logic risks under adversarial conditions.
03

Manual Code Review

Line-by-line and system-level analysis: reentrancy, access control, upgradeability, integer math, proxy risks, and protocol-level interaction bugs.
04

Infrastructure Review

Node and RPC configuration, key management, deployment and upgrade scripts, CI/CD pipelines, and dApp-to-contract boundary hardening.
05

Remediation & Re-Audit

The same engineers who flagged findings close them, add regression tests, and re-audit until the report passes clean.
06

Certification & Publish

A Protofire Certification Badge and a published report for your community, investors, and allocators.
01

Where we audit

Our core engagement: a full manual security review of your Solidity (or Vyper) contracts, backed by static analysis and our own tooling. We cover the standard vulnerability classes (reentrancy, access-control gaps, integer and rounding errors, unchecked external calls, upgradeability and proxy risks), and we read the protocol as a system, not a pile of functions.

Every finding ships with severity, a reproduction path, and a concrete fix rather than a label. Benefits: manual review by engineers who ship protocols · severity-rated findings with fixes · published-report quality you can show allocators.

02

How an engagement works

1

Readiness Review

We scope the codebase, confirm it's near auditable state, and agree on what's in scope. Deliverable: a fixed scope, timeline, and estimate before any work starts.
2

Pre-Audit Hardening

We refactor risky patterns, add tests and invariants, and triage findings early. Deliverable: a hardened branch and a pre-audit findings summary.
3

Full Audit

Manual review plus static analysis and our own tooling, read line by line and as a system. Deliverable: a severity-rated audit report with reproduction paths and fixes.
4

Remediation

We (or your team) close the findings; we re-review until clean. Deliverable: a clean final report and a Protofire Certification Badge.
5

Launch Support

Published-report packaging, a certification badge, and institutional deposit bootstrapping for teams that want security tied to launch credibility. In practice, Swarm Markets: We secured the contracts behind the world's first BaFin-licensed DEX for crypto and tokenized stocks, hardening the smart-contract suite and building the KYC, multi-tier permissioning, testing frameworks, and subgraph integrations a regulated venue requires. It launched with transaction fees cut ~98% ($5-10 to $0.05-0.10) on Polygon L2, and onboarded 7,000+ KYC-verified users across 50+ pairs, including tokenized Apple and Tesla stock.
03

What teams come to us for

Full smart contract security audits (Solidity / Vyper)
Pre-audit hardening before an external review
Oracle, MEV & economic-attack analysis
DeFi protocol audits (DEX, lending, perps, vaults, stablecoins)
RWA & tokenized-asset contract audits
Remediation and re-audit of existing findings
Infrastructure, deployment & key-management review
dApp and integration security review
Certification-badge and published-report packaging
Institutional launch and TVL-bootstrapping support
04

A smart contract auditing firm that ships the fixes

Protofire is a blockchain development and security company with 250+ projects shipped since 2016 (a spin-off of Altoros), across 60+ networks and 95+ protocols. We maintain Solhint, the open-source Solidity linter used by 1M+ developers and built with Ethereum Foundation grants, the same static-analysis engineering that powers our pre-audit work.

We're an official Safe Guardian (Protofire-deployed networks secure $2B+ in TVL across 120+ EVM networks) and a top-3 indexer in The Graph, and our clients include Chainlink, Aave, MakerDAO, Balancer, Filecoin, the Ethereum Foundation, and Swarm Markets. Unlike pure audit shops, we publish our findings: our completed audit reports cover Cyclo Finance, SparkDex, Zoth, Lynx, Punkdomain, Treegens, BitUSD, EthGild, and Rainlang. And because we build protocols too, we can do more than flag what we find; we can fix it.

The wedge is simple: a pure audit firm (a Certik, Hacken, or Cyfrin) reviews your code and leaves; we review it, harden it before an external auditor sees it, remediate the findings, and re-audit until it's clean. We've delivered security-critical work for regulated and institutional systems: the Swarm Markets DEX, the first BaFin-regulated exchange for crypto and tokenized stocks, and Armanino's TrustExplorer Proof-of-Reserves platform. When our auditors flag a risk, they can also tell you exactly how to close it, because they've built the same primitive before.

“We harden code before an external auditor sees it, remediate findings ourselves, and publish the results.”

A one-off audit vs build-time hardening

A one-off external auditProtofire
WhenAfter the code is writtenWhile it is written, before the audit
FindingsSurface late, expensive to fixReduced before an external auditor sees them
ToolingManual reviewSolhint (1M+ developers) plus automated checks
OutcomeA report, then they leaveHardened code, fewer findings, and the fixes shipped

FAQ

What is a smart contract audit?
A smart contract audit is a systematic security review of blockchain code (manual, line-by-line analysis backed by static-analysis tools and our own tooling) to find vulnerabilities and economic-logic flaws before an attacker exploits them. It covers code-level bugs (reentrancy, access-control gaps, integer and rounding errors, unchecked external calls, upgradeability and proxy risks) and system-level risks (oracle manipulation, flash-loan-assisted economic attacks, broken liquidation or incentive logic), because a protocol has to be read as a system, not a pile of functions. At Protofire, every finding comes with a severity rating, a reproduction path, and a concrete fix rather than a label. And because we are a development house that ships protocols, we can go beyond the report: harden the code before an external auditor sees it, remediate the findings ourselves, and re-audit until it is clean.
What's the difference between an audit and pre-audit?
A full audit is the formal security review that produces the severity-rated report you show investors and allocators. Pre-audit is hardening we do before that review: refactoring risky patterns, adding invariants and tests, running our linter and analysis suite, and triaging the issues a top-tier auditor would otherwise bill you to find. Doing pre-audit first reduces the downstream audit's cost and duration, and it means the formal report comes back cleaner, which is exactly what investors and allocators want to see in diligence. Pure audit shops can't offer it because they don't develop; we're a blockchain development house first, so the same static-analysis engineering that powers Solhint, the Solidity linter we maintain, also powers our pre-audit work. Pre-audit is the wedge that lets us cut findings before the meter on a formal review even starts.
Do you fix the findings?
Yes. We're a development house first, so the same senior engineers who audit your code can also remediate it: close the findings, add regression tests so the same issues don't reappear, and re-audit until the report is clean. A pure audit firm hands you a list and leaves; we hand you fixed, re-reviewed code and a Protofire Certification Badge you can put in front of your community and investors. This matters most for the catastrophic failure modes (oracle manipulation, flash-loan economic attacks, broken liquidation math), where knowing how to close a finding requires having built the same primitive before. Because we build DeFi protocols, stablecoins, vaults, and oracle stacks ourselves, our auditors don't stop at confirming a risk exists; they can tell you exactly how to fix it. For teams that want it, we can publish the final report alongside our other completed audits.
How much does a smart contract audit cost?
It depends on scope: lines of code, protocol complexity, and whether pre-audit hardening, remediation, and launch support are bundled in. Rather than publish a rate card, we scope every engagement individually and give you a fixed price and timeline before any work begins, so there are no surprises mid-review. One thing worth knowing: because pre-audit hardening cuts the size and duration of the formal audit by removing findings before the meter starts, it often lowers your total cost rather than adding to it. We start with a security-readiness review to confirm the codebase is near auditable state and agree on what's in scope, then size the audit, remediation, and any launch support from there. The goal is a clean, publishable, allocator-grade report, and a predictable engagement, scoped together up front.
How long does a smart contract audit take?
It depends on scope, and we confirm the exact timeline on the first call once we've seen the code. As a rough guide: a focused Solidity codebase under about 1,000 lines typically runs around 1-2 weeks, while a complex multi-contract DeFi protocol (with oracle, governance, and economic logic to model) typically runs around 3-5 weeks. Pre-audit hardening and remediation are scoped on top of that, though pre-audit often shortens the formal review by cutting findings before it starts. The engagement begins with a security-readiness review to confirm the codebase is near auditable state and agree on scope, then moves through pre-audit, the full audit, and remediation with re-audit until the report is clean. These are typical ranges, not guarantees; we fix scope, price, and timeline together before any work begins.
How are you different from Certik, Hacken, or Cyfrin?
Those are pure audit shops: they review your code and hand you a report. We're a blockchain development house that also audits, which changes what we can do on both sides of the review: we harden the code before an external auditor sees it (pre-audit), remediate the findings ourselves, and re-audit until it's clean. We've shipped 250+ projects since 2016 across 60+ networks and 95+ protocols, and we maintain Solhint, the Solidity linter used by 1M+ developers; that static-analysis engineering sits behind our pre-audit work. We also publish our reports: see our completed audits covering Cyclo Finance, SparkDex, Zoth, Lynx, and others. The work is verifiable, not a private PDF. If you want a partner who can build or fix the system instead of stopping at a list of flags, that's the wedge: when our auditors flag a risk, they can also tell you exactly how to close it.
We're an RWA issuer or treasury, not a crypto-native team. Can you help?
That's a core audience for us. Beyond the code review, we provide the credibility layer institutions need to move capital: published, allocator-grade audit reports, a Protofire Certification Badge, and institutional deposit-bootstrapping support, so the work moves you from technically audited to institutionally credible. For RWA issuers, treasuries, and institutional-grade protocols, an audit is necessary but not sufficient; you also need a risk story that holds up under diligence. We've delivered security-critical work for exactly these regulated systems: the BaFin-licensed Swarm Markets DEX, the first regulated exchange for crypto and tokenized stocks, and Armanino's TrustExplorer Proof-of-Reserves platform. Because we also build the on-chain finance and RWA infrastructure ourselves, our auditors understand the compliance, custody, and Proof-of-Reserve surfaces your assets actually depend on, beyond the contract syntax. The report therefore stands up in front of allocators and regulators, not engineers alone.
Do you audit oracles and infrastructure too?
Yes. Most catastrophic DeFi losses aren't syntax bugs. They come from price-feed manipulation, flash-loan-assisted economic attacks, and broken liquidation logic, so we review oracle dependencies and price-feed manipulation risk, single-source vs. aggregated-feed exposure, MEV and sandwich risk, and the collateral and liquidation math that only breaks under adversarial conditions. We model that attack surface from the inside because we build oracle stacks ourselves: Chainlink-compatible OCR feeds and VRF for Somnia, DIA's oracle contracts ported to Midnight, and Chainlink developer tooling. We also review the operational layer most compromises route through: node and RPC configuration, key management and signer policy, deployment and upgrade scripts, CI/CD pipelines, and the dApp front end and its contract integrations. We run that layer in production (Filecoin's RPC stack at 99.95% uptime and a top-3 indexer on The Graph), so an attacker can't route around the contracts you just hardened.
Do you issue a certification badge?
Yes. Once findings are remediated and the code passes a clean re-audit, we issue a Protofire Certification Badge for your community and investors: a signal that the contracts were reviewed, hardened, fixed, and re-reviewed until the report came back clean. For protocols that want it, we can also publish the report alongside our other completed audits, which cover Cyclo Finance, SparkDex, Zoth, Lynx, Punkdomain, Treegens, BitUSD, EthGild, and Rainlang. That list is public proof of the bar we hold code to, rather than a private PDF. The badge is part of how we tie security work to launch credibility: published, allocator-grade reports plus a certification badge and institutional deposit-bootstrapping support move you from technically audited to institutionally credible, which is what unlocks allocator capital. It's the same path we've taken regulated systems like Swarm Markets and Armanino down.

Reviewed by Luis Medeiros, Field CTO at Protofire. Last reviewed: June 2026.

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