# A Survey of DeFi Security: Challenges and Opportunities

**Authors:** Wenkai Li, Jiuyang Bu, Xiaoqi Li, Hongli Peng, Yuanzheng Niu, Yuqing Zhang  
**arXiv:** [2206.11821](https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.11821)  
**Date:** 2022-06-23  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/2206.11821v3/

## Key points

- DeFi is a financial system operating on blockchain technology
- It enables customized operations between parties
- DeFi transactions include lending and exchanging
- Concerns about DeFi security due to decrease in total value locked
- Paper presents systematic analysis of DeFi security vulnerabilities at each layer of the blockchain
- Application-level vulnerabilities are also analyzed
- Real-world DeFi attacks are classified and correlated with vulnerabilities
- Optimization strategies collected from various layers including data, network, consensus, smart contract, and application layers
- Challenges and future directions in DeFi summarized for further research
- Survey paper contributes to understanding DeFi security issues and provides insights for developing more secure systems

## Summary

DeFi, or Decentralized Finance, is a financial system that operates on a distributed ledger known as blockchain technology. It enables the customization of predetermined operations between parties by utilizing blockchain. DeFi utilizes this technology to execute user transactions such as lending and exchanging. However, the security of DeFi has been a concern, as evidenced by the decrease in the total value locked in DeFi from $200 billion in April 2022 to $80 billion in July 2022. To address this deficiency in DeFi security studies, this paper presents a systematic analysis of DeFi security. The authors begin by summarizing the vulnerabilities related to DeFi at each layer of the blockchain. They also analyze application-level vulnerabilities. Real-world DeFi attacks are classified and analyzed based on their correlation with these vulnerabilities. Furthermore, optimization strategies are collected from various layers including data, network, consensus, smart contract, and application layers. The weaknesses addressed by these strategies and their technical approaches are described comprehensively. Based on this comprehensive analysis, several challenges and possible future directions in DeFi are summarized to provide ideas for further research. This survey paper contributes to enhancing the understanding of DeFi security issues and provides valuable insights for developing more secure systems in the future. The authors of this paper include Wenkai Li, Jiuyang Bu, Xiaoqi Li, Hongli Peng, Yuanzheng Niu ,and Yuqing Zhang .The title of the paper is "A Survey of DeFi Security: Challenges and Opportunities" published in the Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences (2022).