Fantom Network Launches Automated Smart Contract Audit System Watchdog to Monitor for Bugs

On October 27, the Fantom Foundation announced a collaboration with the security and analysis platform Dedaub in order to bolster Fantom’s decentralized finance (defi) ecosystem. Dedaub’s monitoring system called Watchdog will monitor smart contracts on the Fantom blockchain for exploits and buggy code.

The Fantom blockchain aims to protect its defi ecosystem with a new automated smart contract surveillance system called Watchdog, according to a blog post published on Thursday. Fantom is a layer one (L1) EVM-compatible blockchain that leverages an asynchronous byzantine fault tolerance (ABFT) consensus scheme.

“Smart contract vulnerabilities remain a pressing problem across the crypto industry,” the Fantom Foundation’s blog post explains. “In Q1 2022 alone, hackers stole $1.3 billion in cryptocurrencies; 97% of these exploits focused on defi products.”

The Fantom Foundation said that the Dedaub-crafted Watchdog will scan for issues 24/7 and monitor for more than 80 types of exploits. It also includes information about proxy configurations, contract approvals, total value locked (TVL) data, pool sizes, and “whether an address has special privileges.” “[Watchdog] periodically updates and improves with new attack vectors as new research emerges,” the Fantom Foundation detailed. The group behind the Fantom blockchain project added:

Defi projects with at least $10 million in TVL and selected NFT-related projects will automatically have their smart contracts read into the Watchdog system. Each project will receive administrative access to see a list of vulnerabilities within their smart contracts at any time. Projects can manually query each smart contract against any exploit recognized by Watchdog.

Fantom’s native crypto asset fantom (FTM) is situated in the no. 81 position, out of more than 13,000 crypto market capitalizations listed today. Out of the $54.15 billion TVL in defi across all the blockchains on October 28, Fantom is the tenth largest TVL with $497 million or 0.92% of the $54.15 billion aggregate. Fantom-based decentralized finance applications have been attacked in the past as Grim Finance lost $30 million and Deus Finance and Spiritswap were attacked as well.

What do you think about Fantom adding the smart contract security system Watchdog? Let us know your thoughts about this subject in the comments section below.