Many people feel reassured when the project team releases a few audit reports. But do you know that projects audited by multiple institutions in the past have also experienced sudden failures overnight?

Audit reports are indeed very important. DeFi protocols like LISTA that undergo multiple rounds of audits deserve praise. However, there is an easily overlooked issue—the inherent limitations of audits themselves.

First, audits are like sampling inspections; they cannot cover every corner of the code. Second, audits target a specific version at a certain point in time; every subsequent upgrade may introduce new risks. Furthermore, audits mainly focus on technical vulnerabilities, but design flaws in economic models and mechanism vulnerabilities are often undetectable.

So, looking at audit reports alone is not enough. Truly reliable DeFi projects should establish a comprehensive security culture. For example, do they have an open bug bounty program? Is the bounty amount sufficient to attract top white-hat hackers to find issues? How quickly does the team respond and fix problems after discovering them? When upgrading, do they reserve a timelock to give the community a chance to react?

You can focus on these tangible indicators: the total expenditure on bug bounties, the length of the timelock period for mainnet changes, and whether governance voting is truly transparent. Security is not just about a paper report; it’s an ongoing, never-ending battle.

What do you think—are repeated audits more important for DeFi protocols, or is establishing a well-funded, continuous bug bounty system even more crucial?