👋Intro to Cyfrin Codehawks

CodeHawks is a leading competitive smart contract audit marketplace powered by Cyfrin. CodeHawks works to protect DeFi, Protocols, their users, and funds from smart contract exploits through private and public smart contract security auditing competitions, joined by industry-leading auditors world-wide.

The Problem CodeHawks Solves

Digital value exchange enabled by decentralized finance and smart contracts requires outstanding security and best practices to reach mainstream adoption.

Over $250B is locked in the DeFi ecosystem, and in the past six months alone, over $1B has been lost in more than 100 DeFi exploits. Last year, 6% of the Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi was stolen, resulting in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in users and protocols funds and, inherently, faith in the entire ecosystem.

Furthermore, finding, hiring, and working with expert and reliable auditors has been extremely rudimental until now. Protocols were forced to perform word-of-mouth research, with little to no possibility of ensuring the quality of their audits.

CodeHawks solves this by bridging together top-notch Blockchain security experts and Protocols in an eco-system built to create security in web3.

Why CodeHawks?

CodeHawks, powered by Cyfrin, brings together top-notch global auditors and a community of thousands of security researchers to ensure the highest security standards when securing your codebases.

Feature/Attribute	CodeHawks	Competitors
Pricing	Low platform fees	Higher platform fees
Process Transparency	Full Transparency Throughout	Sometimes Opaque
Types of Audits Offered	Competitive & Private	Typically One Type
Referral Program	Generous 15% Referral Fee	Usually Lower or No Referral Program
Audit Speed	Quick Turnaround	Often Slower
Post-Audit Support	Long-term Code Safeguarding	Typically Limited to Initial Audit
Additional Services	Education, long term support	Often Limited to Auditing
Customer Support	24/7 Dedicated Support	Limited Support Hours

How CodeHawks works

There are three core components in every CodeHawks smart contract auditing competition:

1. Sponsors (protocols): Organizations or entities that implement smart contracts.

2. Judges: World-leading experts who oversee the audit process and ensure its integrity.

3. Hawks (auditors): Professionals who conduct the actual audit of the smart contracts

For Sponsors

Protocols approach Cyfrin CodeHawks with their audit requirements. They have the flexibility to choose between:

• Public Competitive Audits: A dynamic audit process where multiple auditors compete to identify vulnerabilities.

• Private Competitive Audits: A more traditional approach where a selected auditor or team reviews the smart contract.

Learn more about all the Cyfrin security solutions and its ecosystem.

For Hawks (Auditors)

The Hawks, our Auditors, lie at the heart of the CodeHawks ecosystem.

They:

• Engage in competitive audits, showcasing their expertise.

• Get paid for their findings.

• Build a network to find private auditing opportunities.

• Are sometimes eligible to become community judges.

If you're interested in becoming a Hawk on CodeHawks, start by visiting our Quickstart guide

For Judges

Judges are the team, community, and protocol members dedicated to reviewing Hawks submissions, deduplicating, validating, testing, and ensuring the highest quality standards when selecting them.

They are responsible for ensuring our top-notch security reports by revising, testing, and verifying thousands of security researchers' submissions every year.

To learn more about our judging process or evaluation criteria - visit the dedicated sections.