In a post from his verified Twitter account, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin issued a warning against the pitfalls of decentralised finance (DeFi) and self-custody, specifically bugs in smart contract code. “The ethos of ‘centralised anything is evil by default, use DeFi and self-custody’ did very well this week,” Buterin wrote, referring to the loss of trust in centralised exchanges, which resulted in record exchange outflows following FTX’s collapse. “However, keep in mind that it, too, has risks: bugs in smart contract code,” Buterin continued, adding that developers should “keep code simple” and perform “audits” and “formal verification” to prevent smart contract exploits.
