Quantum Leap is a game-changer for Starknet, offering reported improvements that are seven times better than previous versions, with an initial estimated throughput of 40 TPS and a latency of 30 seconds. Furthermore, the Cairo syntax has recently undergone a facelift and received further enhancements. It is already available on…

When looking for vulnerabilities in DeFi projects, or creating best practices to prevent them, it is vital to have a classification of attacks, so that we both apply prevention in the correct place, and know when we have sufficient coverage of the threat vectors. Given finite resources we need to…

Introduction The recent introduction GPT–4 has prompted many claims about its value, in this article I want to look at how we can use such tools to assist in auditing smart contracts. I will focus on the Solidity language, and smart contracts written for DeFi applications, as this forms the majority…

A challenge we face when there has been a major upgrade or change to a language or protocol is to bootstrap the experience necessary to audit code in the new language. Although Cairo 1 is substantially different to Cairo 0, the problem is not as daunting as it might first…

Smart contract audit competitions such as Sherlock or Code4rena can be lucrative, but they are increasingly competitive. Finding a vulnerability and getting a prize can be difficult. In this article I will outline some strategies to help. This article is just a brief introduction to the area, to find out…

In this article we take a look at the latest developments in MEV and what that could mean for the future of The Ethereum Network. Censorship Resistance Currently MEV searchers use services like Flashbots to avoid front running. This has been hugely profitable for validators to the extent that the majority of…

Introduction — Cairo 1.0 is not just an iteration over Cairo 0. It is a full rewrite in Rust, whereas Cairo 0 has been written in a pythonic DSL. New Cairo at its core is very similar to Rust. It is meant to be backward compatible with Cairo 0.10 but this is…

This post explores the zero knowledge proof system that Mina uses to create zkSNARKS, I do assume some knowledge of zero knowledge proofs, if this area is new to you, please read some of our introductory articles such as A gentle introduction to zero knowledge proofs, or our guide to…

Zero Knowledge proofs are gaining in interest thanks in part to the role they have played in providing privacy to distributed ledger technology. This post serves as a gentle intuitive explanation, of zero knowledge proofs, more rigorous explanations can be found at our workshops notes (see below). A zero knowledge…