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Comprehensive Update: SlowMist’s Solana Smart Contract Security Best Practices

SlowMist
4 min readMay 12, 2025

Background

With the rapid evolution of blockchain technology, smart contracts — core components of decentralized applications — remain a cornerstone of public blockchain ecosystem security. Solana, a high-performance blockchain that has stood out in recent years, offers tremendous potential through its fast transaction processing and innovative technical architecture. However, these same innovations introduce new security challenges, particularly in account management, contract execution, and state updates, providing attackers with additional vectors for exploitation.

Since the initial release of the Solana Smart Contract Security Best Practices in 2021, the guide has received positive feedback from the community. Many developers and security researchers have endorsed and recommended it:

As the Solana ecosystem has continued to grow and new vulnerabilities have emerged, we have updated and expanded the original guide to provide developers with more comprehensive security recommendations.

Highlights of the Update

This updated version of the Solana Smart Contract Security Best Practices is based on SlowMist’s latest auditing experience. It comprehensively outlines common security issues and solutions found in Solana smart contracts. Covering vulnerability descriptions, exploitation scenarios, and remediation suggestions, the guide serves as a one-stop security reference and operational manual for developers.

Below is the updated table of contents:

https://github.com/slowmist/solana-smart-contract-security-best-practices

This guide will be continuously updated. We welcome developers, auditors, and security professionals to review it on GitHub (https://github.com/slowmist/solana-smart-contract-security-best-practices) and collaborate to enhance the overall security of the Solana ecosystem.

Security as a Continuous Process

According to the SlowMist Blockchain Security Incident Database, as of now, there have been 1,875 blockchain security incidents worldwide, resulting in losses exceeding $35.8 billion. Of these, 305 incidents were directly related to smart contract vulnerabilities. Without a systematic security review before deployment, smart contracts are highly likely to be exposed to critical risks.

Years of auditing experience at SlowMist have shown that smart contract security should not rely solely on one-time audits or patching vulnerabilities. Instead, it must be built on a foundation of continuous auditing and proactive defense. As time goes on, the threat landscape evolves, and new vulnerabilities and attack vectors emerge.

Therefore, securing smart contracts requires attention to the following:

  • Proper Security Budget Allocation: Ensure continuous investment in security throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Ongoing Auditing and Monitoring: Perform regular security audits and promptly patch vulnerabilities.
  • Executive Accountability: Security responsibilities should be assigned at the leadership level to ensure audits are taken seriously and receive sufficient support.

Conclusion

The SlowMist Security Team has years of hands-on experience in smart contract auditing and now fully supports Solana ecosystem projects with comprehensive audit services. We’ve worked with many key players in the Solana space, including Particle Network, UniPassID, Crema Finance, Solyard.Finance, and Larix, among others.

In addition, our in-house security system Badwhale now supports fake deposit detection and risk control integration across Solana, helping platforms defend against on-chain fraud and attacks.

For audit inquiries, feel free to reach out to us:

Email: team@slowmist.com
X (Twitter): @SlowMist_Team
Website: www.slowmist.com

About SlowMist

SlowMist is a blockchain security firm established in January 2018. The firm was started by a team with over ten years of network security experience to become a global force. Our goal is to make the blockchain ecosystem as secure as possible for everyone. We are now a renowned international blockchain security firm that has worked on various well-known projects such as HashKey Exchange, OSL, MEEX, BGE, BTCBOX, Bitget, BHEX.SG, OKX, Binance, HTX, Amber Group, Crypto.com, etc.

SlowMist offers a variety of services that include but are not limited to security audits, threat information, defense deployment, security consultants, and other security-related services. We also offer AML (Anti-money laundering) software, MistEye (Security Monitoring) , SlowMist Hacked (Crypto hack archives), FireWall.x (Smart contract firewall) and other SaaS products. We have partnerships with domestic and international firms such as Akamai, BitDefender, RC², TianJi Partners, IPIP, etc. Our extensive work in cryptocurrency crime investigations has been cited by international organizations and government bodies, including the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

By delivering a comprehensive security solution customized to individual projects, we can identify risks and prevent them from occurring. Our team was able to find and publish several high-risk blockchain security flaws. By doing so, we could spread awareness and raise the security standards in the blockchain ecosystem.

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SlowMist
SlowMist

Written by SlowMist

SlowMist is a Blockchain security firm established in 2018, providing services such as security audits, security consultants, red teaming, and more.

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