CosmWasm smart contract approval process for Mainnet.

[eledra89]

Problem:

• Currently one main attack vector to break Aura Network or other CosmWasm-enabled Cosmos chain is uploading a malicious CosmWasm contract then creating a transaction that breaks Tendermint Consensus. This means different validators when run the transaction will produce different results, making the process becomes non-deterministic and we can't reach consensus anymore. For example:
  • https://twitter.com/junonetwork/status/1511317689574252545?lang=en
  • https://twitter.com/frey_needlecast/status/1552945064145571840
• There is pretty much no way to prevent this behavior as software always have bug, especially with high complexity ones like CosmWasm, Cosmos SDK or Tendermint.

Approach:

However, we can think of a way to reduce the probability of deploying such contracts to the network or help our debugging process easier. I am drafting here a feature that will help doing so.

• Currently, AuraScan has a feature called Smart contract verification: Basically you can upload a smart contract to Euphoria then go to AuraScan to send a link to the Github repository to the contract following this guide. AuraScan will check if the compiled source code is corresponding to the uploaded contract. Then this contract becomes "Verified", meaning we have access to its source code.
• Having the contract source code is extremely important to reproduce the problem that cause non-deterministic behavior of the chain. If we don't have this source code, reverse engineering a deployed contract and debugging will be extremely challenging.
• Thus, we want to propose to have an Approval process for deploying smart contracts to Aura mainnet as follow:
  • Create a web app at: http://approve.aura.network (domain can change later)
  • Users must first deploy and verify their smart contract on Euphoria. It is recommended to have a workable, testable environment of their dapps on Euphoria.
  • A user goes to approve.aura.network to submit a request form where he must input project information, Github, social links (similar to submitting information to CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap). He also must submit the link to the verified contract on Euphoria.
  • Aura Team, possibly with the help of some validators who are good with community / code review must validate information on the form. If it is possible, to review the deployed test version of the DAPP on Euphoria.
  • Euphoria can become a (free) canary network for DAPPs before deploying on mainnet.
  • If the information on the review process is correct and source code of the contract has been verified, Aura Team will DEPLOY the contract on behalf of the contract submitter. A "CodeID" parameter will be returned to the developer so he can instantiates the contract himself. Aura Team will sponsor the transaction fee of the contract deployment.

Pros:
We can do checking on the contract and the project to make sure they are legitimate. We also have access to the contract source code to debug the problem if something happen.

Cons:
It is a centralized process and only Aura team can deploy the smart contract. In the future if we want to decentralize this process, a DAO could be setup if we have enough demand. In some serious case that cause strong impact to the network, a governing proposal can be created.

Looking for more comments on this idea, mainnet is coming in 1.5 months and we want to have this safety mechanism onboard as soon as possible.

[AviaOne]

Increase the security is always a very good thing