Code4rena awards
Smart Contract Security Researcher
High-impact protocol security reviews for DeFi, infrastructure, and complex on-chain systems.
I review protocol logic, accounting invariants, trust boundaries, and exploit paths across smart contract systems. My background combines top-tier competitive audit performance, private reviews, and broader vulnerability research.
Public Track Record
Evidence-backed security work across competitive and private reviews.
valid High findings on Code4rena
valid Medium findings on Code4rena
Cantina review scopes
Zenith review scopes
Selected Competition Results
Public audit placements in adversarial review environments
| Platform | Project | Placement | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code4rena | Nouns DAO | 🥇 1st | $31.7K payout |
| Code4rena | Maple Finance | 🥇 1st | $21.5K payout |
| Code4rena | LooksRare Aggregator | 🥇 1st | $10.9K payout |
| Code4rena | NFTX | 🥇 1st | $10.7K payout |
| Code4rena | Rubicon v2 | 🥇 1st | $10.5K payout |
| Cantina | Goat Tech Smart-contracts | 🥇 1st | $28.1K payout |
| Code4rena | FEI and TRIBE Redemption | 🥈 2nd | $18.9K payout |
| Code4rena | Aura Finance | 🥈 2nd | $18.1K payout |
| Code4rena | Canto | 🥈 2nd | $11.6K payout |
| Code4rena | Blur Exchange | 🥈 2nd | $3.8K payout |
| Code4rena | Rubicon | 🥈 2nd | $3.5K payout |
| Code4rena | Paladin Warden Pledges | 🥈 2nd | $5.7K payout |
| Code4rena | Juicebox V2 | 🥈 2nd | $11.1K payout |
| Code4rena | LSD Network - Stakehouse | 🥉 3rd | $5.1K payout |
| Code4rena | Ooki | 🥉 3rd | $5.1K payout |
| Code4rena | QuickSwap and StellaSwap | 🥉 3rd | $4.9K payout |
| Code4rena | Fractional v2 | 🥉 3rd | $4.8K payout |
| Code4rena | Frankencoin | 🥉 3rd | $4.4K payout |
| Code4rena | Illuminate | 🥉 3rd | $3.6K payout |
| Code4rena | Canto Identity Subprotocols | 🥉 3rd | $3.3K payout |
| Cantina | Beraborrow Blockend | 🥉 3rd | $7.7K payout |
Selected Private & Managed Reviews
Private review and managed-review work across recognizable protocols and clients
These are private audits, managed reviews, and internal review scopes rather than public competitions. The mix is intentional: the goal is to show repeated trust across wallets, L2s, bridges, trading systems, staking infrastructure, launch systems, and other protocol-specific codebases.
Selected protocols and clients
- Coinbase
- Optimism
- zkSync
- Uniswap
- Mantle
- Biconomy
- SushiSwap
- Reserve Protocol
- LI.FI
- Arrakis
- StakeDAO
- Berachain
- NFTX
- Plume
- Virtuals
- Infrared
- Valantis
- Mitosis
- Opinion Labs
- Treasures
- Kintsu
- Beraborrow
- Clober
- LinkPool
- Diva Staking
- Juice Finance
- Foresight
- EdgeX
- Aionex
- IVX Finance
- Palette Protocol
- PaintSwap
- Angstrom
- Clanker
- Theo
- Thrackle
- Ventuals
Coverage
- Wallets & account abstraction
- Rollups, bridges & cross-chain
- Stablecoins & lending
- DEXs, AMMs & orderbooks
- Hooks, intents & execution systems
- Perpetuals, options & trading venues
- Staking, DVT & reward distribution
- Governance, veToken & protocol migrations
- Liquidity management & aggregators
- Prediction markets & tokenized vaults
- NFT rails & launch infrastructure
- ...and other protocol-specific logic
Research & Talks
Conference-grade security research beyond smart contract audit platforms
Before focusing full-time on protocol reviews, I worked on broader security research across browser and blockchain infrastructure. That background shapes how I approach exploitability, hidden assumptions, and non-obvious system boundaries in smart contract reviews.
- Black Hat USA 2021
- DEFCON 29
- Black Hat Europe 2020
Selected talks and published research
- Black Hat USA 2021 Research on exploiting a critical TRON vulnerability through blockchain infrastructure attack paths.
- DEFCON 29 Follow-on presentation work grounded in the same exploitation and failure-analysis mindset.
- Black Hat Europe 2020 Earlier systems-security research on subtle compiler behavior and non-obvious vulnerability surfaces.
Why this matters for protocol reviews
- Browser security research: multiple Chrome vulnerabilities and practical experience with complex, stateful attack surfaces.
- Blockchain infrastructure research: a critical TRON vulnerability and experience reasoning across components rather than isolated code snippets.
- Direct carryover into audit work: exploitability-first reviews focused on trust boundaries and lifecycle transitions.
Expertise
Where I usually find material risk
Accounting mismatches
Broken solvency assumptions, stale accounting, share inflation, reward drift, and state sync failures across vaults, staking, and lending systems.
Liquidation and settlement edges
Collateral valuation, liquidation ordering, partial repayment, fee settlement, bad debt handling, and asynchronous fund movement.
Execution and liquidity logic
Routing assumptions, orderbook state transitions, hook-driven execution, liquidity management, and price-impact edge cases.
Cross-domain trust boundaries
Bridge message flow, replay surfaces, auth registries, settlement guarantees, and the assumptions hidden in cross-chain integrations.
Privilege and upgrade surfaces
Upgrade paths, signer permissions, emergency roles, wallet delegation, EIP-7702 and ERC-6492 flows, and governance-controlled behavior.
Protocol-specific business logic
The part static tools usually miss: custom launch mechanics, launchpad state machines, prediction logic, staking semantics, and integration-only failure modes.
Approach
Protocol-first review, not checklist-first review.
Model the system before reading line by line
I start from money flow, authority boundaries, upgrade surfaces, and lifecycle transitions so the review is anchored to how the protocol is supposed to behave.
Turn assumptions into concrete attack questions
I focus on where assumptions can be violated: accounting drift, stale state, incorrect settlement, unexpected privilege reach, and integration-induced edge cases.
Prioritize exploitability over surface-level noise
The goal is not to maximize issue count. The goal is to identify material exploit paths and validate them with concrete reasoning, PoCs, or invariants where useful.
Help the fix actually land correctly
I prefer concise findings with clear root cause, exploit conditions, and remediation guidance, followed by targeted fix review on the changed scope.
Working Style
Best fit for high-context protocol work where correctness matters more than volume.
Best fit: focused protocol reviews, pre-launch security reviews, upgrade reviews, and fix reviews on systems with real complexity in accounting, execution, or trust boundaries.