Smart Contract Audits: How Long Does It Take? ImmuneBytes (2024)

According to the Forbes report, “Elliptic, a security firm, believes that over $1 billion has been stolen on blockchain bridges so far in 2022, as a result of five big thefts.”

Do you know over half of the smart contracts within the Ethereum blockchain remain unaudited? This is why we encounter many hacks in the Blockchain space daily!

With further blockchain development, smart contract security audits have become one of the most important ways to secure this financial world. Considering the prominence of this process, people often have several questions in their minds related to the auditing process.

In this blog, we will focus majorly on the smart contract audit duration so that you get to know how long the project team will take to audit your project.

So, without any further ado, let us get started.

The Myth Associated with The Duration of a Smart Contract Audit Service

People often develop a misconception whenever they think of getting assistance from a smart contract auditor for their projects. They feel that this process will take a lot of time, irrespective of your work.

However, in reality, the time that the experts take to do this depends on how complex the use case is and a wide range of other factors.

The lack of belief in the audit team and low information about security vulnerabilities is one of the most prominent reasons why people do not get their smart contracts audited.

Additional Read: Top 10 Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

What is the Duration of an Audit?

As discussed, there are so many parameters that we need to consider before getting our smart contracts audited. Following are a few of those things.

Project Size

The first and most critical parameter to consider for an audit is the project’s size.

For example- If you want a token contract for ERC20 tokens to get audited, then you will get the audit report for the same just within 48 hours. However, if the token is used within a Dapp, it won’t be possible to examine the same line of code within the same duration. Instead, the auditors can even take a whole month to do it.

Let’s consider the type of contract, which is the token sale contract. These advanced ERC20 contracts are different from the basic ones. They have a well-structured and defined tokenomics and a lot more advanced features. One can also find staking and swapping in such contracts. Compared to the basic tokens that take just a couple of days to get audited, these advanced tokens can go up to two weeks or more.

The Complexity of the Project

The next thing to consider is how complex the project is.

For example- you are designing a Decentralized exchange or, say, a money market. Naturally, the project cannot be given to a new auditor. It would require the experience of a skilled and expert auditor who would need extensive amount of timeframe to go line by line and ensure that there is not even a single vulnerability in it.

There are some instances where protocols or smart contracts depend on various external factors, leaving them exposed to many blockchain security issues.

Naturally, such projects will take a minimum of a month to get audited.

Other projects in this area include lending, borrowing, insurtech, and derivatives, to name a few.

Recommended: Smart Contract Audit Service Company

Types of Audit

The type of audit your project needs is a deciding factor for defining the time required to audit a smart contract. If you are sure about data integrity and that your smart contract has the best development guidelines, then you can go for an Interim audit.

Interim Audits

It takes about a day to complete an Interim Audit. In this audit, there is an expert who looks over the structure of the project and then understands the

vulnerabilities that could be there in it.

This type of audit ensures that the project is moving correctly and that a security issue that could change the entire structure of the project in the later stages is found as early as possible.

Full Security Audit

It is possible to perform the Interim audit simultaneously while developing the smart contract. On the contrary, a full security audit comes into play only after completing the application. So, this is the last step before you can deploy the application on the main net.

If the application gets deployed without this full security audit, there are high chances of coming across a wide range of mainnet bugs and vulnerabilities.

Audit Process

The duration of the smart contract audit depends on the process selected as well. These are:

Manual Audit

Manual auditing entails checking the code line by line for vulnerabilities and programming faults. It also determines whether the smart contract is adhering to the intrinsic business logic. In addition, it identifies edge situations and optimizes code for gas use. Unit tests are a type of manual audit.

Manual audits for erc20/bep20 contracts typically last 3 to 5 days. However, the length of the audit depends on the code.

Automatic Audit

The use of audit tools to scan code for defects is referred to as automated auditing. It guarantees that all smart contracts are covered, leaving no room for human mistakes. Fuzzing and reporting are types of Automatic audits.

For erc20/bep20 contracts, the automated audit may take up to one day.

Summing up

Considering the smart contract audit duration, people often go out into the market without getting the final reports from auditors. The imperativeness of getting this process done cannot be stressed enough. All you need to devote is some extra time and money; however, this can save millions of your digital assets in the long run!

Not a bad deal, anyway? Get in touch with us for more information about blockchain technology and blockchain security audit.