Contract architecture & design
Minimal contracts by default — every extension beyond the core logic adds audit surface and failure modes.
Development · Smart Contracts
We build contracts that hold value safely.
Contracts built to hold value safely, not just to look clever in a demo. Solidity, Rust and Move engineering — minimal, audited, gas-efficient contracts that survive real usage.
Corum8 builds and audits smart contracts across Solidity, Rust and Move — architecture, gas optimization, upgradability design, testing and coordinated third-party audits for contracts that hold real value. Every deployment handling meaningful TVL goes through two independent third-party audits as a minimum, run by firms you engage directly.
What's included
Everything under “smart contract development” that we actually run
Gas optimization
Storage layout, loop structure and call patterns tuned for real transaction costs, not just correctness.
Upgradability & proxy patterns
Transparent, UUPS or diamond proxy patterns chosen deliberately, with the tradeoffs of each made explicit.
Testing & simulation
Unit, integration and fuzz testing, plus mainnet-fork simulation against realistic transaction sequences.
Formal verification
Mathematical proof of core invariants for the components where a bug would be catastrophic.
Multi-chain & multi-language deployment
Solidity for EVM chains, Rust for Solana, Move for Aptos and Sui — matched to where your users actually are.
Audit coordination
We book and manage the calendar with two independent tier-one firms, plus bug-bounty programs at mainnet for material TVL.
Post-deployment monitoring
On-chain monitoring and incident runbooks for the moment something behaves unexpectedly in production.
Is this you?
Signals you need serious smart-contract engineering
You don't need all of them. One is usually enough to justify the call.
Your contract will hold real value with no audit
The contract is close to deployment and handles user funds, but no independent security review has happened yet.
Gas costs are pricing out your users
Transaction costs on your current contract are high enough that users are abandoning transactions.
You need an upgrade path you don't have
A bug or new feature needs shipping, but your current contract has no upgradability built in.
A prior audit flagged real issues
You've had a security review come back with findings and need them properly remediated, not patched over.
You're expanding to a new chain
The same logic needs to run on a chain with a different language and execution model than your first deployment.
You've had an exploit or a near-miss
Something already went wrong, or almost did, and the contract needs a serious security-first rebuild.
Sectors
What we build
The logic differs, the security discipline doesn't.
DeFi Protocol Contracts
Lending, staking and AMM logic with invariants enforced on every state change.
Token Contracts
ERC-20, SPL and equivalent standards with minimal, audit-clean extensions.
NFT & Marketplace Contracts
Minting, royalty and marketplace logic built for gas efficiency at scale.
DAO & Governance Contracts
Voting, timelock and treasury logic that actually controls what it claims to.
Vesting & Treasury Contracts
Time-locked vesting and multisig-controlled treasury logic with clear audit trails.
Cross-Chain & Bridge Contracts
Message-passing and asset-bridging logic engineered against the highest-risk attack surface in crypto.
Gaming & On-Chain Logic
Game-state and reward contracts built for high transaction volume.
Enterprise & RWA Contracts
Transfer restrictions enforced on-chain for permissioned, tokenized instruments.
Process
How a smart-contract build runs, in practice
- 01
Model the threat surface
Attack vectors and adversarial scenarios mapped before a line of Solidity, Rust or Move gets written.
- 02
Build and test
Contracts engineered against the threat model, with unit, integration and fuzz testing throughout.
- 03
Audit and remediate
Two independent third-party audits minimum, with every finding remediated and re-reviewed before deployment.
- 04
Deploy and monitor
Multisig-executed, documented deployment with on-chain monitoring live from day one.
Case studies
Smart-contract work we've shipped
A lending protocol audit-readiness rebuild and a cross-chain bridge built to the highest assurance bar in the category.
Core logic rebuilt around minimal, well-tested primitives
A lending protocol's original contracts had accumulated ad-hoc modifications to the point where reviewing them cleanly had become impractical. We rebuilt the core logic around minimal, well-tested primitives rather than patching the existing code, then coordinated the review calendar with two independent firms so remediation and re-review both happened before mainnet.
Bridge contract shipped with formal verification on the settlement logic
A cross-chain bridge needed the highest possible assurance on its message-passing and settlement logic, given that bridge exploits are among the most costly incidents in the industry. Formal verification on the core settlement invariants, alongside two independent third-party audits, gave the team a level of assurance beyond standard review coverage alone.
Why Corum8
Why teams building contracts work with us
Minimal contracts, by discipline
Every extension beyond core logic gets scrutinized for the audit surface and failure modes it adds.
Two audits, minimum, always
No mainnet deployment without at least two independent third-party audits from tier-one firms.
Multi-chain, multi-language depth
Solidity, Rust and Move engineering under one roof, matched to where your users actually are.
Formal verification where it matters
Mathematical proof of core invariants for the components where a bug would be catastrophic.
Zero loss events across our contracts
A track record shaped by watching what actually fails in production, not just theorizing about security.
Monitoring that outlasts the launch
On-chain monitoring and incident runbooks that stay live long after deployment day.
What drives scope
What drives scope and budget on a smart-contract build
Cost is driven by contract complexity, chain choice and audit depth — not lines of code.
Contract complexity
A single-purpose token contract is lightest. Multi-contract systems with cross-contract state are materially heavier.
Chain and language
EVM/Solidity work is the most standardized. Solana/Rust and Move-based chains carry different tooling maturity.
Audit depth
One audit is baseline for low-TVL contracts. Two audits plus formal verification is standard once real capital is at stake.
Upgradability requirements
Immutable contracts are simplest to audit. Proxy-based upgradability adds real architectural and security complexity.
Integration surface
A standalone contract is simpler than one integrating with external oracles, bridges or other protocols.
Testing rigor
Standard unit testing is one scope. Fuzz testing and mainnet-fork simulation against adversarial scenarios is more.
FAQ
Questions worth a direct answer
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Smart contract development is the engineering, testing and security review of self-executing code deployed on a blockchain — covering architecture, gas optimization, upgradability design, testing and coordinated third-party audits. The discipline centers on minimizing attack surface, since a smart contract handling real value is effectively immutable, high-stakes financial infrastructure the moment it deploys.
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Cost is driven by contract complexity, chain and language choice, audit depth, upgradability requirements, integration surface and testing rigor — not lines of code. A single-purpose token contract is a different budget than a multi-contract DeFi system with external oracle integrations and formal verification requirements.
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Two independent third-party audits from tier-one firms is the standard baseline for any contract holding meaningful value; formal verification on the most critical components is increasingly expected for high-TVL protocols. The right depth scales with how much capital the contract will hold and how catastrophic a failure would be.
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It depends entirely on which chain your users are on, not a technology preference. Solidity for Ethereum and EVM-compatible L2s, Rust for Solana, Move for Aptos and Sui. Most teams building for a single primary chain need one language; multi-chain products need engineers fluent in more than one.
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Threat modeling, contract architecture and implementation, unit and fuzz testing, coordination of two independent third-party audits, remediation of their findings, deployment and verification, and post-deployment monitoring. Bug-bounty program setup is standard for contracts with material TVL at mainnet.
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Yes — remediating findings from a prior audit, and getting the fix independently re-reviewed, is a common and important part of the practice. A finding that gets patched without a follow-up review is a common source of contracts that pass an audit on paper but remain vulnerable in practice.
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Yes — including designing an upgrade path for contracts that launched immutable and now need one, and migrating state to a new contract version where an upgrade path was never built in. Both require careful handling of existing user funds and state, which is a different risk profile than a fresh deployment.
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Start from a battle-tested standard wherever one fits, and write custom code only where your logic genuinely differs. OpenZeppelin implementations of ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 have been reviewed more times than anything we could write from scratch, and using them is simply better engineering. Custom earns its place in the parts that are actually yours — the distribution rules, the transfer restrictions, the settlement logic. Minimal custom surface on top of proven foundations is the cheapest contract to audit and the safest to run.