Audits
Reserve Protocol aims to establish a robust and stable asset-backed currency platform. However, this necessitates the implementation of an additional layer of smart contracts, introducing an extra level of smart contract risk.
The Reserve Protocol team is aware of these tradeoffs and has prioritized security by undergoing multiple audits conducted by the world's leading security firms.
Smart contract security audits
| Auditor | Date | Report Link |
|---|---|---|
| Trails of Bits | Aug 2022 | Report |
| Solidified | Oct 2022 | Report |
| Ackee | Oct 2022 | Report |
| Halborn | Nov 2022 | Report |
| Code4rena | Mar 2023 | Report |
| Code4rena | Jun 2023 | Report |
| Code4rena | Jul 2023 | Report |
| Trust Security | Feb 2024 | Report |
Bug bounty
In addition to undergoing numerous audits, the Reserve Protocol team would like to motivate the community to undertake their own audits and will reward individuals who responsibly disclose any vulnerabilities they find.
Bug bounty of $5,000,000
Reserve Protocol has partnered with Immunefi for establishing a bug bounty program. See additional details of the program, or report any findings here:
https://immunefi.com/bounty/reserve/
Reserve protocol risks
This section is dedicated to explaining risks associated with using the Reserve Protocol. Whenever you interact with the Reserve Protocol, you as the user assume the risk of doing so. We believe that making best efforts to comprehensively outline risks creates accountability and empowers users. Any time you are uncertain about a particular risk, we invite you to ask on Discord.
We encourage all users to familiarize themselves with these risks and continually stay updated about changes that may affect the protocol.
Reserve protocol risks - Smart contracts
The Reserve Protocol is built using smart contracts. If there were undiscovered bugs or vulnerabilities in these contracts, they could be exploited leading to loss of user funds. Although the protocol's contracts have undergone 6 (soon to be 7) security audits, no audit can guarantee complete security.
Smart contract-related risks can manifest in a variety of ways. A number of pertinent examples and categories are detailed below.
Oracle risks
Reserve uses oracles to fetch real-time price data. If these oracles fail or deliver incorrect information, or if the usage of oracles on Reserve is otherwise incorrect, it could impact the protocol's ability to maintain accurate accounting and lead to other operational disruptions. For example, if Chainlink misreports the price of USDC, an RToken may consider a collateral asset to have defaulted and attempt to swap to emergency collateral, potentially at a loss.
Sandwich attacks and MEV
MEV searchers are constantly scanning the Ethereum blockchain to look for profitable opportunities to extract value. When interacting with AMMs (such as Curve Finance for trading RTokens), users should exercise caution and consider the slippage, which dictates the degree to which searchers can extract from users’ transactions. There are other ways for users to independently seek MEV protection, such as through the Flashbots RPC.
Governance risks
The Reserve Protocol team has deployed a suggested governance system for RTokens (Governor Alexios), which enables fully onchain governance to RTokens. The scope of the powers are broad, so it is possible for governance attacks to happen. These potential attacks could involve an attacker accumulating enough governance power to enact a malicious upgrade allowing them to steal funds.
This type of attack is mitigated through the existence of special roles; however, these special roles must be wielded effectively and benevolently in order to offer meaningful protection. When using an RToken, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with who holds each of these special roles, which you can do on the Details + Roles page and the Governance page on Reserve Register (eUSD example: Details + Roles, Governance).
Collateral asset risks
Issuer/Custodian
It is possible for stablecoin (and other) issuers to impose restrictions on transferability, through blacklists. Although commonly intended to target sanctioned individuals, it is possible for these powers to extend to DeFi protocols. Additionally, stablecoin issuers are relied on for maintaining healthy reserves of real world assets. The strategies used to maintain these reserves may sometimes fail, or the custodians themselves may not always act in good faith. The best way we are aware of to familiarize yourself with the risks for any given underlying stablecoin is to review the report on that asset published on Bluechip, if they cover that asset.
Price
RTokens inherit the weighted price of all of their backing collateral assets. Where one or more underlying assets deviate in price (even where they are meant to be pegged), the aggregate price of the RToken will be affected. Fluctuations in RToken price should be anticipated where volatile collateral is present.
A slightly distinct price consideration involves that of the RSR overcollateralizing RTokens. Based on the amount of RSR that must be sold to re-collateralize a default, significant market movements may neutralize the effectiveness of the overcollateralization stemming from a weaker mark to market price.
Underlying protocols
Reserve Protocol RTokens leverage assets from external protocols, like Compound, Aave, Flux, and many more. Users therefore assume all of the risks of these underlying protocols (smart contract, governance, or otherwise) when holding RTokens.
Reserve protocol risks - Interfaces
Front-end operator risks
The Reserve Protocol can be interacted with directly through its smart contracts, or through third party-created user interfaces. Reserve Register, for example, is run by a third party company, and has not yet undergone a technical audit. Users must always be vigilant for malicious or compromised frontends, such as in Badger’s case. Even in normal operation, bugs in front-end code may be responsible for requesting erroneous transactions which could result in user losses.
Anyone can create an RToken
In a similar way as how anyone can create a new trading pair on Uniswap, anyone can permissionlessly create a new Reserve stablecoin (RToken) by interacting with Reserve Protocol’s smart contracts. The protocol applies a system of factory smart contracts that allows anyone to deploy their own smart contract instance.
Creating an RToken can be done either by interacting directly with the Reserve Protocol’s smart contracts or any user interface that gets built on top of it. The first user interface for these smart contracts will be released by ABC Labs the company that's leading protocol development. Besides the creation of RTokens, this user interface will also support exploring usage and stats related to RTokens, RToken minting & redeeming, and RSR staking.
Non-compatible ERC20 assets
The following types of ERC20s are not supported to be used directly in an RToken system. These tokens should be be wrapped into a compatible ERC20 token to be used within the protocol. A concrete example is the use of Static ATokens for Aave V2.
- Rebasing Tokens that return yields by increasing the balances of users
- Tokens that take a "fee" on transfer
- Tokens that do not expose the decimals() in their interface. Decimals should always be between 1 and 18.
- ERC777 tokens which could allow reentrancy attacks
- Tokens with multiple entry points (multiple addresses)
- Tokens with multiple entry points (multiple addresses)
- Tokens that do not adhere to the ERC20 standard in general
Advanced RToken parameters
When deploying an RToken, the deployer has the ability to configure many different advanced parameters. The following list goes into detail about what these parameters do and some of the factors the deployer should keep in mind to set them.
As many of these parameters concern the Protocol Operations, we advise reading through that section of the documentation first—as it will give the deployer the necessary context to fully understand all parameters.
Trading delay(s)
The trading delay defines how many seconds should pass after the basket has been changed before a trade can be opened.
A collateral asset can instantly default if one of the invariants of the underlying DeFi protocol breaks. If that would happen, and we would not apply a trading delay, the protocol would react instantly by opening an auction. This would give only auctionLength seconds for people to bid on the auction, making it very possible for the protocol to lose value due to slippage.
The trading delay parameter may only be needed in the early days - before we get to a point where there is a robust market of MEV searchers. We expect that this parameter can be set to zero later on (once a robust market of MEV searchers is established).
