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Staking Contracts - Aria Protocol

Prepared by:

Halborn Logo

HALBORN

Last Updated 05/30/2025

Date of Engagement: May 14th, 2025 - May 16th, 2025

Summary

100% of all REPORTED Findings have been addressed

All findings

9

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

2

Low

2

Informational

5

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Aria Protocol engaged Halborn to conduct a security assessment on their smart contracts beginning on May 14th, 2025 and ending on May 16th, 2025. The security assessment was scoped to the smart contracts provided to Halborn. Commit hashes and further details can be found in the Scope section of this report.


The Aria Protocol codebase in scope mainly consists of smart contracts implementing a staking mechanism for RWIP tokens with time-locked staking tickets and KYC verification for unstaking operations.

2. Assessment Summary

Halborn was provided 3 days for the engagement and assigned 1 full-time security engineer to review the security of the smart contracts in scope. The engineer is a blockchain and smart contract security expert with advanced penetration testing and smart contract hacking skills, and deep knowledge of multiple blockchain protocols.


The purpose of the assessment is to:

    • Identify potential security issues within the smart contracts.

    • Ensure that smart contract functionality operates as intended.


In summary, Halborn identified some improvements to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks, which were mostly addressed by the Aria Protocol team. The main ones are the following:

    • Include a nonce in the signed message that increments with each use.

    • Replace the instance of _mint() with _safeMint() in the contract implementation to ensure recipients can properly handle ERC721 tokens.

    • Replace the current signature verification with OpenZeppelin's ECDSA library which includes malleability protection.

    • Add validation to ensure that staking amounts are greater than zero.


All addressed findings have been consolidated and incorporated into version v1.0.9, available in the following commit: https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/tree/c0a926fa1725b1bc03cca1bd8d70a5633ddcc061.

3. Test Approach and Methodology

Halborn performed a combination of manual review of the code and automated security testing to balance efficiency, timeliness, practicality, and accuracy in regard to the scope of this assessment. While manual testing is recommended to uncover flaws in logic, process, and implementation; automated testing techniques help enhance coverage of smart contracts and can quickly identify items that do not follow security best practices.

The following phases and associated tools were used throughout the term of the assessment:

    • Research into architecture, purpose and use of the platform.

    • Smart contract manual code review and walkthrough to identify any logic issue.

    • Thorough assessment of safety and usage of critical Solidity variables and functions in scope that could led to arithmetic related vulnerabilities.

    • Local testing with custom scripts (Foundry).

    • Fork testing against main networks (Foundry).

    • Static analysis of security for scoped contract, and imported functions (Slither).


4. Static Analysis Report

4.1 Description

Halborn used automated testing techniques to enhance the coverage of certain areas of the smart contracts in scope. Among the tools used was Slither, a Solidity static analysis framework. After Halborn verified the smart contracts in the repository and was able to compile them correctly into their abis and binary format, Slither was run against the contracts. This tool can statically verify mathematical relationships between Solidity variables to detect invalid or inconsistent usage of the contracts' APIs across the entire code-base.


The security team assessed all findings identified by the Slither software, however, findings with related to external dependencies are not included in the below results for the sake of report readability.

4.2 Output

The findings obtained as a result of the Slither scan were reviewed, and some were not included in the report because they were determined as false positives.



5. RISK METHODOLOGY

Every vulnerability and issue observed by Halborn is ranked based on two sets of Metrics and a Severity Coefficient. This system is inspired by the industry standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System.
The two Metric sets are: Exploitability and Impact. Exploitability captures the ease and technical means by which vulnerabilities can be exploited and Impact describes the consequences of a successful exploit.
The Severity Coefficients is designed to further refine the accuracy of the ranking with two factors: Reversibility and Scope. These capture the impact of the vulnerability on the environment as well as the number of users and smart contracts affected.
The final score is a value between 0-10 rounded up to 1 decimal place and 10 corresponding to the highest security risk. This provides an objective and accurate rating of the severity of security vulnerabilities in smart contracts.
The system is designed to assist in identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their level of risk to address the most critical issues in a timely manner.

5.1 EXPLOITABILITY

Attack Origin (AO):
Captures whether the attack requires compromising a specific account.
Attack Cost (AC):
Captures the cost of exploiting the vulnerability incurred by the attacker relative to sending a single transaction on the relevant blockchain. Includes but is not limited to financial and computational cost.
Attack Complexity (AX):
Describes the conditions beyond the attacker’s control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability. Includes but is not limited to macro situation, available third-party liquidity and regulatory challenges.
Metrics:
EXPLOITABILITY METRIC (mem_e)METRIC VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Attack Origin (AO)Arbitrary (AO:A)
Specific (AO:S)		1
0.2
Attack Cost (AC)Low (AC:L)
Medium (AC:M)
High (AC:H)		1
0.67
0.33
Attack Complexity (AX)Low (AX:L)
Medium (AX:M)
High (AX:H)		1
0.67
0.33
Exploitability EE is calculated using the following formula:

E=∏meE = \prod m_e

5.2 IMPACT

Confidentiality (C):
Measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information resources managed by the contract due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting access to authorized users only.
Integrity (I):
Measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of data stored and/or processed on-chain. Integrity impact directly affecting Deposit or Yield records is excluded.
Availability (A):
Measures the impact to the availability of the impacted component resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. This metric refers to smart contract features and functionality, not state. Availability impact directly affecting Deposit or Yield is excluded.
Deposit (D):
Measures the impact to the deposits made to the contract by either users or owners.
Yield (Y):
Measures the impact to the yield generated by the contract for either users or owners.
Metrics:
IMPACT METRIC (mIm_I)METRIC VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Confidentiality (C)None (C:N)
Low (C:L)
Medium (C:M)
High (C:H)
Critical (C:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Integrity (I)None (I:N)
Low (I:L)
Medium (I:M)
High (I:H)
Critical (I:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Availability (A)None (A:N)
Low (A:L)
Medium (A:M)
High (A:H)
Critical (A:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Deposit (D)None (D:N)
Low (D:L)
Medium (D:M)
High (D:H)
Critical (D:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Yield (Y)None (Y:N)
Low (Y:L)
Medium (Y:M)
High (Y:H)
Critical (Y:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Impact II is calculated using the following formula:

I=max(mI)+∑mI−max(mI)4I = max(m_I) + \frac{\sum{m_I} - max(m_I)}{4}

5.3 SEVERITY COEFFICIENT

Reversibility (R):
Describes the share of the exploited vulnerability effects that can be reversed. For upgradeable contracts, assume the contract private key is available.
Scope (S):
Captures whether a vulnerability in one vulnerable contract impacts resources in other contracts.
Metrics:
SEVERITY COEFFICIENT (CC)COEFFICIENT VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Reversibility (rr)None (R:N)
Partial (R:P)
Full (R:F)		1
0.5
0.25
Scope (ss)Changed (S:C)
Unchanged (S:U)		1.25
1
Severity Coefficient CC is obtained by the following product:

C=rsC = rs

The Vulnerability Severity Score SS is obtained by:

S=min(10,EIC∗10)S = min(10, EIC * 10)

The score is rounded up to 1 decimal places.
SeverityScore Value Range
Critical9 - 10
High7 - 8.9
Medium4.5 - 6.9
Low2 - 4.4
Informational0 - 1.9

6. SCOPE

REPOSITORY
(a) Repository: main-contracts
(b) Assessed Commit ID: 2800755
(c) Items in scope:
  • contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol
  • contracts/rwip/staking/StakedRWIP.sol
  • contracts/rwip/staking/StakingTicket.sol
Out-of-Scope: Third party dependencies and economic attacks.
Remediation Commit ID:
Out-of-Scope: New features/implementations after the remediation commit IDs.

7. Assessment Summary & Findings Overview

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

2

Low

2

Informational

5

Security analysisRisk levelRemediation Date
Signature replay during unstakingMediumSolved - 05/19/2025
Unsafe token minting can lead to locked assetsMediumSolved - 05/23/2025
Signature verification vulnerable to malleabilityLowSolved - 05/23/2025
Zero amount stake allows for unlimited ticket token mintingLowSolved - 05/28/2025
Missing input validationInformationalAcknowledged - 05/28/2025
Missing eventsInformationalPartially Solved - 05/28/2025
Typo in function nameInformationalSolved - 05/28/2025
Use of revert strings instead of custom errorsInformationalSolved - 05/24/2025
Lack of named mappingInformationalAcknowledged - 05/28/2025

8. Findings & Tech Details

8.1 Signature replay during unstaking

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Medium

Description
Proof of Concept
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/44/commits/4db3df61201b6f279f42899ca3c7844906cf3f8b
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L195-L215

8.2 Unsafe token minting can lead to locked assets

//

Medium

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/47/commits/e0854d66fa74b1061ba0682106c9629da8f1ea86
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/StakingTicket.sol#L115

8.3 Signature verification vulnerable to malleability

//

Low

Description
Proof of Concept
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/45/commits/74ca8dd090a353922ddc24607b42d577a87201dc
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L212

8.4 Zero amount stake allows for unlimited ticket token minting

//

Low

Description
Proof of Concept
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/55/commits/612586a7cef867055b6f3c1d8e0cb9026a555daa
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L123-L129

8.5 Missing input validation

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/StakingTicket.sol

8.6 Missing events

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/55/commits/bfe98bdbadcbfb33b6e4affcbe9b191bb9f9a382

8.7 Typo in function name

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/55/commits/0c53aaff2b9d83577382317a5e930e3062543449
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/StakedRWIP.sol#L51

8.8 Use of revert strings instead of custom errors

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/AriaProtocol/main-contracts/pull/44/commits/4db3df61201b6f279f42899ca3c7844906cf3f8b
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L197
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L214
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L229

8.9 Lack of named mapping

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
References
AriaProtocol/main-contracts/contracts/rwip/staking/RWIPStaking.sol#L73

Halborn strongly recommends conducting a follow-up assessment of the project either within six months or immediately following any material changes to the codebase, whichever comes first. This approach is crucial for maintaining the project’s integrity and addressing potential vulnerabilities introduced by code modifications.

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