POA Network is building a Proof of Authority sidechain to Ethereum to facilitate secure, fast, and cheap transactions while being fully compatible with the existing Ethereum ecosystem. A cross-chain bridge allows easy transfer of tokens from a POA Network chain onto the main Ethereum chain and vice-versa. The POA Network system consists of many connected open-source components. Smart contracts form the core and give strong guarantees, dApps and APIs allow for easy access and a custom parity client is running an efficient Proof of Authority based version of Ethereum using the Aura consensus. The audit focused on the core part, the smart contracts deployed on POA network.
Our audit investigated technical issues such as the initialization of keys and their distribution, the requirements of the validator set, and the upgradability of the smart contracts. We also looked into the reward system and the overall governance to check their soundness and design.
Overall, the ChainSecurity team found that POA Network is a very well-coded complex system with clean documentation. ChainSecurity investigated the code in depth over a timespan of two months with 4 auditors. The full audit report is available here, detailing the specifications which have been checked by ChainSecurity. During the audit, several issues have been found by ChainSecurity and successfully addressed by POA network. ChainSecurity sees no remaining security issues in the current version.
POA Network is an Ethereum-based platform that offers an open-source framework for smart contracts. Towards the end of 2017, POA Network launched its own blockchain utilizing a new and unique consensus mechanism known as Proof of Authority (POA). POA leverages an independent group of validators who are all licensed public notaries around the United States which increases security while enabling a method of governance on the blockchain. POA Network is scalable, secure and cheaper than other projects, aiming to provide a platform for small and medium sized organizations.
For more information please visit https://poa.network/
ChainSecurity uses the most advanced tools directly out of research labs at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich, one of the best technical universities, to validate the correctness and uncover vulnerabilities in smart contracts. A thorough expert audit focuses on defining an exact functional specification, proves that it holds using formal verification tools and uncovers security, design and architecture issues in the analyzed code. Crypto projects rely on the detailed public audits by ChainSecurity to ensure top-grade security for their smart contracts and protocols.