Type of Publication: Article in Collected Edition

Defying the Odds: Solana’s Unexpected Resilience in Spite of the Security Challenges Faced by Developers

Author(s):

Andreina, Sebastien; Cloosters, Tobias; Davi, Lucas; Giesen, Jens-Rene; Gutfleisch, Marco; Karame, Ghassan; Naiakshina, Alena; Naji, Houda

Title of Anthology:

Proc. of the 31th ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer & Communications Security (CCS)

Publisher:

ACM

Location(s):

Salt Lake City, USA

Publication Date:

2024

Citation:

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Abstract

Solana gained considerable attention as one of the most popular blockchain platforms for deploying decentralized applications. Compared to Ethereum, however, we observe a lack of research on how Solana smart contract developers handle security, what challenges they encounter, and how this affects the overall security of the ecosystem.

To address this, we conducted the first comprehensive study on the Solana platform. Our study shows, quite alarmingly, that none of the participants could detect all important security vulnerabilities in a code review task and that 83% of the participants are likely to release vulnerable smart contracts. Our study also sheds light on the root causes of developers' challenges with Solana smart contract development, suggesting the need for better security guidance and resources. In spite of these challenges, our automated analysis on currently deployed Solana smart contracts surprisingly suggests that the prevalence of vulnerabilities - especially those pointed out as the most challenging in our developer study - is below 0.3%. We explore the causes of this counter-intuitive resilience and show that frameworks, such as Anchor, are positively aiding Solana developers - even those unmindful of security - in deploying secure contracts.