What Is the Difference between a Formal Verification and a Traditional Smart Contract Audit?
A traditional audit involves human auditors manually reviewing code and using automated tools to find known vulnerabilities and logic flaws. Formal verification is a mathematical process that proves or disproves the correctness of the contract's code against a formal specification of its intended behavior.
While an audit is a search for bugs, formal verification is a rigorous proof that the code satisfies specific properties under all possible execution paths. Formal verification offers a higher level of certainty for critical financial logic.
Glossar
Verification
Attestation ⎊ Verification within cryptocurrency, options trading, and financial derivatives functions as a critical process confirming the validity of transactions and data integrity, particularly vital in decentralized systems lacking central authorities.
Audit
Verification ⎊ Audit within cryptocurrency, options trading, and financial derivatives represents a systematic examination of code, processes, and financial records to ensure integrity and adherence to established protocols.
Formal Verification
Process ⎊ Formal verification is a rigorous mathematical process used to prove the correctness of algorithms, protocols, or smart contract code against a formal specification.
Formal Specification
Description ⎊ Formal specification provides a rigorous, mathematical description of a system's behavior and properties.