Introduction

The world of Web3 cybersecurity is evolving. The old guard has traditionally relied on external audits to protect valuable smart contracts. While these audits are essential, they are costly, time-consuming, and often not foolproof. Despite undergoing multiple external audits, high-profile projects like Penpie ($27M hack), Ronin ($12M hack), and Euler ($197M hack) have all suffered devastating exploits. This highlights a critical flaw in the traditional model of relying solely on third-party auditors to ensure protection against smart contract vulnerabilities.

The new guard, however, is taking a different approach. They are moving towards decentralizing security and building/managing as much as possible in-house, with multiple layers for extra protection. One company at the forefront of this shift is Nex Labs.

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Introduction to Nex Labs

Nex Labs is at the forefront of bringing real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain and simplifying the investment process for users. Their innovative approach allows investors to gain exposure to both cryptocurrency and traditional financial assets through their indices. By creating on-chain, transparent, and accessible indices with no hidden fees, Nex Labs is making it easier than ever for users to diversify their portfolios.

Their platform includes:

• Spot Products & Derivatives: Offering a wider range of investment options across different asset classes.
  
  
• Multi-Chain Availability & Single-Chain Experience: Providing seamless user experiences across multiple blockchains.
  
  
• Smart Index Platform: Featuring sector-based indices, machine learning-driven trading, automatic dividend reinvestment, and tools to allow users to build their own indices and become fund managers.
  
  
• Self-Custody: Enabling 24/7 smart contract-enabled trading with social login and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

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Nex Labs and Olympix: A Shared Mission

Nex Labs sought Olympix's expertise to strengthen their security, reduce reliance on external audits, and empower their developers to identify and resolve smart contract vulnerabilities throughout the development process. By integrating Olympix's smart contract tools, Nex Labs aimed to create a scalable, efficient, and highly secure framework for all future Solidity-based development.

“We were really curious to learn and to know everything about audit projects. So your tools were interesting to understand the tests that we didn't know… and to gain knowledge.”
– Gianluca Di Bella, CEO & Co-Founder

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Olympix Solution: The Technical Approach

The primary goal of Olympix is to increase security by providing tools that enable core developers to build resilient smart contracts from the outset. While external audits remain necessary, Olympix provides a layer of protection that scales with the development process, minimizing reliance on expensive, recurring external audits.

Nex Labs utilized Olympix's full suite of smart contract audit tools throughout their development, including:

• static analysis
• automated unit test generation
• mutation testing
• and fuzz testing 

Olympix also guided the Nex Labs team through an Olympix-led in-house audit. During this process, the Olympix team provided a comprehensive checklist covering all aspects of an internal audit to best prepare Nex Labs for their external, paid audit.

“In my opinion, the best thing about the Olympix tool is that you know where you should look for issues… For example, in which line, in which function I should be looking for issues, or which line should I write a test for, or which function should I write a test for.”
– Soheil Parsaei, Solidity Developer

This checklist encompasses items related to Olympix tools and testing methodologies, as well as broader aspects like tooling and environment, error and exception handling, dependency management, documentation, peer reviews, and operational security (opsec). While Olympix guided Nex Labs through the checklist this time, the goal was to create a repeatable framework that Nex Labs could use independently moving forward. This results in a scalable suite of smart contract tools that can be applied to all future development efforts.

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Olympix Impact: The Technical Advantage

The collaboration with Olympix left Nex Labs well-prepared for their external audit. Thanks to Olympix’s tools, Nex Labs reduced the working time of the audit by cleaning up their code and reducing the code size. This not only optimized the external audit process but also allowed the auditors to focus on more sophisticated and novel smart contract vulnerabilities.

“We reduced the [audit] working time, the code sizes, and optimized… You know, there may be something that they could have found, but we saw that previously so they could focus deeper. The result was that they didn't find that much… it was really actually a low number of vulnerabilities that they found.”
– Morteza Khedri, Chief Solidity Developer

By using Olympix as an “audit agent” during development, Nex Labs gained confidence in their internal security process. They now have the tools and standards necessary to ensure all future external audits will be efficient and thorough - with fewer findings and reduced costs - thanks to AI smart contract audit capabilities built into Olympix.

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Olympix Impact: The Business Advantage

The secondary goal of Olympix is to reduce security costs. Traditional audits are expensive, one-off costs. Olympix’s smart contract audit tools, on the other hand, scale indefinitely. They can be applied to unlimited contracts, on unlimited lines of Solidity code, by unlimited developers, for a fraction of the cost of even one external audit.

The benefits of using Olympix are twofold:

• Cost Reduction: By cleaning up code and reducing code size, Nex Labs received lower quotes from auditors who often scope projects based on lines of code.
  
  
• Enhanced Confidence: Where teams previously relied on multiple external audits of the same code or only the most costly audits from top firms, Nex Labs now feels confident in the thoroughness of their internal audit, aided by automated smart contract audit processes.
  
  

“Your tools were really helpful to screen our code base and to be more prepared for the audit. And of course, we also saved some money because using your tools, we cleaned up our code base, and auditors make their proposals based on amounts and lines of code. We saved money, first of all… But also we gained knowledge. So it was a win-win. Now every time we have to write a new smart contract, we have that knowledge gained from your tools. For me, as a business leader, that's really interesting in terms of scalability, efficiency of the product, and cost savings.”
– Gianluca Di Bella, CEO & Co-Founder

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Conclusion

The collaboration between Nex Labs and Olympix demonstrates the value of adopting a proactive, in-house security approach. By leveraging Olympix's AI smart contract audit tools and expertise, Nex Labs has streamlined their development process, reduced audit costs, and established a scalable framework for all future Solidity smart contract development.

The future of Web3 cybersecurity lies in empowering developers to own their security posture from day one. As more teams adopt this model, the overall security of the crypto ecosystem will be strengthened.

Get Started with Olympix

Explore Olympix's suite of smart contract tools and learn more about the Olympix-led automated smart contract audit process. Empower your team to take control of your smart contract security from the start.

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