Shipping Reliable Smart Contracts: A Testing Checklist

Smart contracts are unforgiving: there is no hotfix after deployment. This is the checklist we run before mainnet.

Before writing tests

• Write down every invariant ("total supply never changes", "only the owner can pause").
• List every external call.

Tests

1. Unit tests for every public function, including failure paths.
2. Fuzz tests for arithmetic and access control.
3. Fork tests against real mainnet state for integrations.

Before deploy

• Static analysis with no unexplained findings.
• A second engineer reviews the diff line by line.
• A staged rollout with caps on value at risk.

Checklists are boring. Exploits are worse.