Smart Contract Security (Bachelorseminar)

Introduction

Smart contracts are programs that run on blockchains, often managing critical financial functions such as stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and wallets. While blockchains offer strong guarantees for integrity and availability through cryptographic hash chains and distributed networks, smart contracts themselves can be vulnerable to exploits. These vulnerabilities may be targeted by malicious actors globally, posing significant risks, especially since many smart contracts hold large amounts of crypto assets. Over the past decade, over $10 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen through smart contract exploits across various blockchain networks.

In this seminar, we will explore smart contracts incidents on major blockchains from the Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos ecosystems. We will analyze how these vulnerabilities have been exploited and learn best practices for preventing and mitigating such security risks in smart contract development.

Instructor

Dr. Sebastian Banescu

Times

Friday, 10:00 - 12:00, Oettingenstr. 67, Room 165.

First meeting: 18. October 2024. Attendance is mandatory.

Signing up

You can sign up to the seminar via the Zentralanmeldung for Bachelor Seminars (on Moodle), deadline September 30.

Prerequisites

• Preferred language is English both written and verbal for the oral presentation
• Knowledge of any programming language and the basics of computer networks
• Knowledge of consensus protocols and distributed systems such as blockchains is a plus