What to Expect From a Solana Smart Contract Audit

If your Solana program will hold other people's money, a security review before launch is one of the best investments you can make. But many teams have never been through one. Here's how the process works, how to prepare so it goes faster and costs less, and what a review can and can't tell you.

How a review works

1. Scoping

The reviewer looks at the code's size and complexity and agrees exactly what's in scope: which programs, which commit, and which integrations. A fixed commit matters: reviewing a moving target wastes everyone's time.

2. Understanding the design

Before hunting bugs, reviewers need to understand what the program is supposed to do. Clear documentation here makes the rest faster and catches logic flaws, the bugs no tool can find.

3. Review

The core of the work:

• Manual, line-by-line review for access control, account validation, arithmetic, cross-program calls and business logic. See the most common Solana vulnerabilities.
• Automated scanning for known patterns and vulnerable dependencies.
• Testing and fuzzing the riskiest instructions with unexpected inputs.

4. The report

Each finding is written up with:

• A severity rating: typically critical, high, medium, low and informational.
• Where it is and how it could be exploited.
• A recommended fix.

5. Fixes and verification

Your team fixes the findings, and the reviewer checks each fix, then updates the report to show what's resolved. Don't skip this step: fixes sometimes introduce new bugs.

How to prepare

• Freeze the code you want reviewed and share the exact commit.
• Write a short spec: what each instruction does, who can call it, and what must always be true (for example, "the vault always holds at least the total staked").
• Include your tests. Good tests show intent and speed up the review.
• List known concerns. If you're unsure about something, say so.
• Remove dead code and unfinished features from scope.

Well-prepared code gets a faster, cheaper and more thorough review.

What an audit can't promise

A review greatly reduces risk; it doesn't make code guaranteed safe. Reviewers look at a specific commit, in a set time, with the information given. Protect yourself further with:

• A second review from a different team for high-value protocols.
• A bug bounty after launch.
• Monitoring and a plan for incidents.
• Safe upgrade authority, held by a multisig.

After the review

Publish the report (or a summary). It builds trust with users and investors, and shows you took security seriously.

Get a review

Our Solana security review includes manual review, automated scanning, fuzzing, a written report with severities, and verification of every fix. Building the program too? See our DeFi and program development.