In the world of smart contracts and ERC20 tokens, independent audits should have been the norm by now. So far, that has not been the case, yet companies such as Quantstamp are trying to make a positive impact in this area. The company recently conducted a security audit of Binance’s ERC20 tokens, and found no real issues to speak of.
Binance is Doing the Right Thing
It is evident that there is a huge lack of proper independent audits of exchanges, smart contracts, and ERC20 tokens. Although Ethereum’s token standards are impressive and intriguing, there is a real chance that some issues will arise. In particular, the recent issues with ERC20 token smart contracts which allowed for a massively inflated supply have sparked a lot of debate and concern in the industry.
This is where Quantstamp and other companies can make a positive impact in the future. The firm specializes in performing security audits of smart contracts. Although it seems very few projects employ such companies to audit their code, Binance currently does. One of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges has acknowledged the growing need for proper auditing, especially when it comes to ERC20 tokens.
As such, the company assisted Binance by auditing all of its listed ERC20 tokens. The main focus was on determining whether or not these tokens were subject to batchOverflow and proxyOverflow 0-day vulnerabilities. Thankfully, the Quantstamp audit found that Binance’s supported tokens are all safe from harm at this stage. This confirms that not every ERC20 tokens is created equal, but it is good to see the damage limited to just a handful of tokens rather than the majority of ERC20 tokens.
This proactive approach by Binance deserves to be applauded. Centralized exchanges have a responsibility to their customers to ensure that all funds are safe, and that vulnerabilities cannot be exploited. So far, Binance is the only exchange to have sought out an independent third-party audit, although we can only hope other trading platforms will follow their example in the future. After all, a security audit is the base requirement for any centralized trading platform in this day and age.
Quantstamp’s CEO, Richard Ma, commented:
Quantstamp shares Binance’s safety-first philosophy in protecting their customers and supports the exchange’s ambitions to create the gold standard in security for the mass adoption of digital currencies. In light of the recent vulnerabilities, we are proud to have assisted Binance in its mission to help protect their token holders and the wider Ethereum community.
It is interesting to note that Quantstamp used a mix of manual and automated audit procedures to look at all of the ERC20 tokens listed on Binance. None of these currencies were susceptible to the two aforementioned vulnerabilities, yet it will remain important to keep tabs on any future tokens added to this exchange. With these massive exploits only having been discovered recently, it’s still too early to tell how many tokens may be affected at this stage.
