Preventing DeFi Hacks & the Need for Better DeFi Developer Experience

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For developers of decentralized finance applications, the odds are well and truly stacked against them. Today’s DeFi landscape is littered with dozens of dApps that have been hacked, exploited and bled dry, despite being built by some of the most experienced and careful developers. 

Building DeFi is hard and it’s not going to change without a major overhaul of the way dApps are created. One of the core problems is the code - there’s so much of it that it’s almost impossible to make sure it doesn’t contain any exploits. 

The biggest pitfall of creating reliable dApps is that even the most simple function must be written with complex and extremely difficult to analyze code. Smart contract development requires an in-depth knowledge, not only of the programming language, but also of how the underlying blockchain platform operates. The stakes are incredibly high, with one simple mistake potentially resulting in millions of dollars worth of value lost. 

A common complaint of Ethereum developers is that they only spend around 10% of their time actually writing code, with 90% of their effort spent ensuring that it’s safe for deployment. But even with such care and attention, the history of DeFi is one that’s littered with stories of hacks and exploits, leading to enormous losses that will never be recovered. 

It’s not that the developers are at fault. Rather, it’s the result of an unsuitable development paradigm. With smart contracts, the focus is firmly fixed on managing assets correctly and ensuring that actions can only be taken by authorized users. However, developers are forced to