TL;DR
This proposal explores adding a proactive smart contract security layer to complement Venus existing audits, formal verification, and monitoring by applying continuous static analysis, unit test generation, mutation testing, and an internal audit agent leveraging deterministic architecture to surface findings and automatically generate bug proof of concepts earlier in development, before audits and deployment.
Summary
Venus is one of the most widely used and battle tested lending and borrowing protocols on BNB Chain, with security positioned as a core priority across the smart contract development lifecycle. With roughly $1.6B in TVL, the cost of a single missed issue can be significant.
This proposal suggests adding a proactive security layer that runs automatically on every code change to surface vulnerabilities and implementation issues earlier in the SDLC, before progressing to formal verification or external audit. The goal is to reduce noise early, strengthen test suites, and allow downstream security efforts to focus on higher value review and verification.
Motivation
Venus already follows best practices including audits, transparency, and a bug bounty program. Formal verification is an excellent technique for proving deep semantic properties such as protocol invariants, safety and liveness conditions, and core economic rules.
In practice, formal verification and audits are most effective when lower level bugs, incorrect assumptions, and implementation noise have already been addressed earlier in development. Automated SDLC tooling helps clear away issues that are not the target of formal methods, allowing verification efforts to be more comprehensive, efficient, and resilient.
Venus V4 emphasizes risk management as a core pillar. A layered, shift left security approach aligns naturally with this direction, especially as the protocol evolves with more complex mechanisms and pool level risk controls.
Problem Statement
While Venus already benefits from audits, formal verification, bug bounties, and monitoring, there is an opportunity to strengthen security earlier in the development lifecycle:
- Small or incremental changes can introduce risk between audits
- Developers benefit from faster, automated feedback during active development
- Formal verification is not optimized to wade through noisy, low level bugs
- Earlier SDLC tooling enables a layered, shift left security approach
Introducing automated security tooling earlier helps ensure later stage verification and audits can focus on the semantic properties that matter most.
How Mature Teams Sequence Security Tooling
Teams operating security at scale tend to follow a layered funnel rather than relying on a single technique:
- Static analysis to remove obvious and structural flaws early
- Unit testing and mutation testing to ensure developer intent is exercised
- Formal verification to prove critical invariants and protocol rules
- Audit and review to apply human judgment where automated methods fall short
Skipping earlier layers makes downstream techniques slower, more brittle, and more expensive. Proactive SDLC tooling helps narrow the funnel so formal verification and audits can operate on cleaner, higher signal code.
Proposed Approach
Introduce a proactive smart contract security toolkit that integrates directly into existing development workflows and runs automatically on every code change. The approach combines static analysis, automated unit test generation, mutation testing, and an internal audit agent leveraging deterministic architecture to surface findings and automatically generate bug proof of concepts.
The goal is to surface vulnerabilities earlier, strengthen test suites, and increase developer velocity by automating multiple forms of testing during development rather than adding another point in time review.
This model is already in use in other ecosystems, including an active engagement with the Uniswap Foundation, where similar tooling is applied to improve early stage security testing and downstream audit outcomes.
Scope
A practical first step would be a custom demo run against a pre audit commit of already audited Venus code. This allows the community to evaluate signal quality, benchmark findings against prior audits, and assess effectiveness before proceeding to a formal proof of concept.
Potential scope includes:
- Integration with existing repositories and CI workflows
- Automated testing on every code change
- Reporting focused on actionable findings and generated bug proof of concepts
Exact scope and duration would be defined collaboratively.
Relationship to Existing Security Efforts
This proposal is intentionally additive. It does not replace audits, formal verification, monitoring, or bug bounties. It strengthens earlier stages of the SDLC so downstream security processes can operate on cleaner, higher signal code.
Expected Benefits
- Earlier detection of vulnerabilities during development
- Stronger and more comprehensive test suites
- Increased effectiveness of formal verification through reduced noise
- Improved developer velocity via automated, continuous testing
Next Steps
If there is interest from the community, the next step would be to run a custom demo on existing Venus code to demonstrate effectiveness and benchmark results, followed by discussion of a scoped proof of concept.
Happy to answer questions or refine scope based on community feedback.