A structured Solidity audit process helps founders move from prototype to mainnet confidently by preparing the scope, tests, and documentation early, collaborating during review, and prioritizing fixes for safer, more predictable DeFi launches.
A structured Solidity audit is most effective when founders treat it as a process they can prepare for rather than just a document they receive.
A practical Solidity audit checklist helps teams move from prototype to mainnet in predictable stages: getting code ready, collaborating smoothly with auditors, and acting on the report in a disciplined way.
This article outlines that lifecycle in plain language, with concrete steps founders can follow even if they are not security specialists.
What Is a Solidity Audit?
In plain terms, a Solidity audit is a focused safety review of the contracts that will hold user funds or govern protocol behavior. Independent reviewers:
- Read the code line by line, looking for ways it can be misused or behave unexpectedly;
- Compare the implementation against the protocol’s intended design;
- Use tools and test harnesses to explore edge cases that may not be captured by normal tests;
- Deliver a report describing issues, their potential impact, and recommended fixes.
It is not a guarantee that the code is perfect, but it is a structured attempt to identify and mitigate the most serious risks before other people’s capital is involved.
Pre-Audit Checklist for Founders
Make the audit an accelerator, not a bottleneck.
Before involving auditors, teams can significantly improve outcomes by working through a pre-audit checklist:
1. Lock Down the Scope
- Decide which contracts are in scope for the first mainnet deployment;
- Tag the exact commit(s) that auditors should review;
- Remove unused or experimental contracts from the deployment set.
2. Stabilize the Interface and Configuration
- Finalize public function signatures, events, and key parameters;
- Document default parameter settings for launch (fees, LTVs, caps).
3. Harden the Development Hygiene
- Ensure consistent compiler versions and no floating pragmas;
- Use established libraries (e.g., OpenZeppelin) for roles, tokens, and math where possible.
4. Build a Solid Test Base
- Unit tests for all core flows: deposits, withdrawals, swaps, liquidations, reward claims;
- Integration tests covering multi-contract interactions and typical user journeys;
- Edge-case tests: maximum leverage, extreme prices, minimal liquidity, multiple actors.
5. Prepare Documentation for Auditors
- High-level protocol overview (what problem it solves, how it works);
- Role and permission matrix for all admin and governance accounts;
- Description of economic assumptions (oracle sources, fee flows, caps).
Working through this list ensures that audit time is spent on higher-value analysis rather than basic code hygiene.
What Happens During the Solidity Audit
Setting expectations for the review itself.
While processes vary by provider, a typical Solidity audit includes:
1. Kickoff and Scope Confirmation
- Agreement on contracts, commits, and out-of-scope components;
- Discussion of timelines, communication channels, and preferred format for questions.
2. Manual Code Review
- Line-by-line reading of the implementation;
- Focus on access control, math correctness, state machine transitions, and upgrade patterns.
3. Automated Analysis and Fuzzing
- Static analysis to catch patterns such as unchecked external calls, dangerous arithmetic, or uninitialized variables;
- Fuzzing and invariant testing against properties like solvency, conservation of value, and cap enforcement.
4. Threat Modeling and Economic Review
- Identification of attack paths, such as oracle manipulation, liquidation games, or incentive misalignment;
- Consideration of known Ethereum vulnerabilities documented in public resources on Solidity security best practices.
5. Issue Triage and Draft Reporting
- Grouping of findings by severity and theme;
- Clarifying questions to the team where intent is ambiguous.
6. Final Report and Optional Re-Audit
- Delivery of the report;
- Follow-up review of fixes or diffs for high-impact issues.
Founders benefit from assigning a point person to respond quickly to auditor questions and to coordinate fixes across the team.
How to Interpret and Prioritize Audit Findings
Turning a PDF into an actionable backlog.
Once the audit is complete, founders often face the question: what should be fixed before launch, and what can be accepted?
A practical prioritization checklist:
1. Address all Critical and High-Severity Issues Before Mainnet
- The default expectation is to fix or redesign around any issue that can lead to loss of funds, permanent lockup, or governance capture;
- If a high-severity issue is accepted, document the rationale and any compensating controls.
2. Triage Medium-Severity Findings by Exploitability and User Impact
- Prioritize items that could be chained with other issues or misconfigurations;
- Consider whether parameter restrictions or monitoring can temporarily reduce risk.
3. Evaluate Low-Severity and Informational Items as Debt
- Treat them as opportunities to improve clarity, gas efficiency, or maintainability;
- Schedule work on them once launch-blocking issues are resolved.
4. Align Findings with Test Coverage
- For each significant issue, add tests that would fail if the bug reappears;
- Strengthen invariants and property-based tests based on auditor recommendations.
5. Communicate with Stakeholders
- Summarize the main findings and resolutions in a concise, neutral update for investors and partners;
- Avoid implying absolute security, and emphasize the ongoing nature of risk management.
This approach helps teams move from an audit report to a clear, ordered set of engineering actions.
When to Re-Audit or Extend Scope
Recognizing when the risk surface has changed.
A single audit is rarely sufficient for a protocol that evolves. Founders can use a simple rule set:
1. Re-Audit After Material Code Changes
- New modules, markets, or collateral types that materially change risk;
- Major refactors or upgrades to core contracts or proxy implementations.
2. Re-Audit After Major Incidents or Near-Misses
- On-chain anomalies, halted markets, or serious bugs discovered internally;
- Any event that suggests underlying assumptions were incomplete.
3. Extend the Scope for New Networks or Environments
- Ports to new L2s or chains;
- Adoption of novel tooling, compilers, or bridging mechanisms that change trust boundaries.
4. Periodic Reviews for Actively Upgraded Systems
- Time-boxed audits annually or semi-annually for protocols that ship frequent parameter or logic updates;
- Anchoring re-audits to concrete triggers helps avoid both overconfidence and unnecessary churn.
Conclusion
A good Solidity audit is not just a late-stage hurdle; it is a structured process that starts well before auditors read a single line of code and continues as the protocol evolves.
Founders who approach it with a checklist mindset, preparing code and documentation, engaging during the review, and triaging findings systematically, tend to extract more value and ship with fewer surprises.
For teams looking to institutionalize this discipline, adopting a structured Solidity audit process through a dedicated Solidity audit checklist provider helps turn security work into a predictable part of the product lifecycle rather than a one-off event.
Peyman Khosravani is a seasoned expert in blockchain, digital transformation, and emerging technologies, with a strong focus on innovation in finance, business, and marketing. With a robust background in blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), Peyman has successfully guided global organizations in refining digital strategies and optimizing data-driven decision-making. His work emphasizes leveraging technology for societal impact, focusing on fairness, justice, and transparency. A passionate advocate for the transformative power of digital tools, Peyman’s expertise spans across helping startups and established businesses navigate digital landscapes, drive growth, and stay ahead of industry trends. His insights into analytics and communication empower companies to effectively connect with customers and harness data to fuel their success in an ever-evolving digital world.
