What Makes a Great Smart Contract Audit Report?

What Founders, Engineers, and PMs Should Actually Expect from Auditors

📌 Introduction

Hiring an audit firm is just the beginning—but interpreting the audit report is where most protocols slip up. Some reports look impressive, but are light on substance. Others seem brief, but contain sharp, actionable findings.

So what separates a great audit report from a checkbox PDF?

🧠 The Purpose of an Audit Report

A strong audit report should:

• Identify real-world exploit paths

• Prioritize issues by severity and exploitability

• Offer clear recommendations, not vague warnings

• Educate your internal team on secure development

A good report protects your users. A great one makes your engineers smarter.

📋 5 Key Components of a High-Quality Audit Report

1. Executive Summary

   • Non-technical overview for founders, investors, and stakeholders

   • Highlights total vulnerabilities found, fixed, and unfixed

2. Scope & Methodology

   • What contracts were reviewed?

   • What tools and techniques were used?

   • Manual vs. automated coverage?

3. Detailed Findings

   • Clear breakdown of vulnerabilities

   • Severity levels (Critical, High, Medium, Low, Informational)

   • Direct code references + screenshots

4. Remediation Suggestions

   • Fix guidance with context

   • Optionally includes updated code samples or alternatives

5. Appendices

   • Tool outputs, test cases, risk matrix, coverage stats

🔧 Tools Used by Strong Auditors

• Static Analysis: Slither, MythX, Semgrep

• Fuzzing: Foundry, Echidna

• Manual Review: Always the most important

• Testing Suites: Foundry (preferred), Hardhat, Brownie

🚩 Red Flags in Weak Audit Reports

• Vague language: “This could be a risk” without context

• No prioritization: Every issue ranked the same

• No remediation guidance

• Copy-paste boilerplate across reports

📈 Why Great Reports Help You Scale

A quality audit report becomes a resource:

• For training future engineers

• For informing product managers about technical tradeoffs

• For reassuring users and investors with transparency

Want to impress your DAO, users, or exchange partners? Share a clean, confident audit report with a short remediation timeline.

📞 Need Help Prepping for an Audit?

We work with founders pre-audit to:

• Clean up code

• Recruit internal security reviewers

• Connect with top-tier firms

Book a call if you want your audit report to impress—and protect.