Mae Drop1 Contracts - TAEX


Prepared by:

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HALBORN

Last Updated 06/18/2025

Date of Engagement: June 16th, 2025 - June 17th, 2025

Summary

100% of all REPORTED Findings have been addressed

All findings

10

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

1

Low

2

Informational

7


1. Introduction

TAEX engaged Halborn to conduct a security assessment on their smart contracts beginning on June 16th, 2025 and ending on June 17th, 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 Mae Drop1 Contracts codebase in scope consists of a smart contract responsible for supporting an NFT sale through different mint phases such as a whitelist and a public phase.

2. Assessment Summary

Halborn was provided 2 days for the engagement and assigned a full-time security engineer to review the security of the smart contracts in scope.

 

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 acknowledged by the TAEX team. The main ones were the following:

    • Enforce the maximum NFTs per address invariant upon moderator mints.

    • Consider including the block chain ID in the message hash.

    • Consider allowing users to provide a slippage upon NFT mints.


3. Test Approach and Methodology

Halborn performed a manual review of the code. Manual testing is great to uncover flaws in logic, process, and implementation.

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.


4. 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.

4.1 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

4.2 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 (I:N)
Low (I:L)
Medium (I:M)
High (I:H)
Critical (I: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)+mImax(mI)4I = max(m_I) + \frac{\sum{m_I} - max(m_I)}{4}

4.3 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,EIC10)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

5. SCOPE

Files and Repository
(a) Repository: mae-drop1-contracts
(b) Assessed Commit ID: d05748f
(c) Items in scope:
  • MAENFTCollection.sol
Out-of-Scope: External dependencies and economic attacks.
Out-of-Scope: New features/implementations after the remediation commit IDs.

6. Assessment Summary & Findings Overview

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

1

Low

2

Informational

7

Security analysisRisk levelRemediation Date
Users are able to go over the maximum allowed mintsMediumRisk Accepted - 06/18/2025
Users could be charged more than expected upon mintingLowRisk Accepted - 06/18/2025
Cross-chain signature replay possible under specific conditionsLowRisk Accepted - 06/18/2025
Unnecessary initialization of the current phaseInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Unnecessary initialization of an NFT's metadataInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Unnecessary payable casts in multiple placesInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Floating pragmaInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Custom errors should be usedInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Consider Using Named MappingsInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025
Functions that change state don't emit eventsInformationalAcknowledged - 06/18/2025

7. Findings & Tech Details

7.1 Users are able to go over the maximum allowed mints

//

Medium

Description

The functions responsible for moderator minting do not enforce the max mint per address invariant.


The code aims to guard against users going over the maximum allowed NFT mints per address:

require(addressMintCount[msg.sender] + _quantity <= MAX_MINT_PER_ADDRESS, "Exceeds per-address limit");


The above check is enforced in multiple places in the code. However, a user can still go over the maximum mints due to the functionality allowing moderators to mint to users:

function moderatorMint(address _to, uint256 _quantity) external onlyModerator {
   require(_to != address(0), "Invalid recipient");
   require(_quantity > 0 && _quantity <= MAX_MINT_PER_TX, "Invalid quantity");
   require(totalSupply + _quantity <= MAX_SUPPLY, "Exceeds max supply");

   _batchMintTokens(_to, _quantity);
}


As seen, the above function does not enforce the invariant. This allows a user to conduct the following sequence of actions:

  1. User is about to be minted the maximum allowed amount of NFTs by a moderator.

  2. User frontruns the moderator's mint and mints himself the maximum allowed amount of NFTs himself, using one of the few functions available to him.

  3. The moderator's call goes through and now the user has 2 times the maximum allowed amount of NFTs as the check is missing in that function.

The maximum allowed NFT mints per address check, is not enforced in the moderatorBatchMint() function as well.

BVSS
Recommendation

Consider adding the max mints per user check in the function for moderator minting. Also, increment the mapping tracking the mint count of an address accordingly.

Remediation Comment

RISK ACCEPTED: The TAEX team has accepted the risk of this finding.

7.2 Users could be charged more than expected upon minting

//

Low

Description

The price of an NFT can change and there is no slippage to protect against it, causing potential loss for users.


Upon public and whitelist minting, users are charged an amount of funds based on the amount of NFTs minted by them:

uint256 totalCost = publicPrice * _quantity;
require(msg.value >= totalCost, "Insufficient payment");


If the user has provided more than supposed to, he gets refunded the excess:

if (msg.value > totalCost) {
      (bool success, ) = payable(msg.sender).call{ value: msg.value - totalCost }("");
      require(success, "Refund failed");
}


The issue is that the price can change at any moment as there is a setter function for it:

function setPricing(uint256 _whitelistPrice, uint256 _publicPrice) external onlyModerator {
   whitelistPrice = _whitelistPrice;
   publicPrice = _publicPrice;
   emit PricingUpdated(_whitelistPrice, _publicPrice);
}


This allows the following scenario to occur:

  1. User provides all of his 9 ETH upon a public mint, expecting to get refunded the excess.

  2. He sees the price is 2 ETH per NFT and decides to mint 4 NFTs, a total price of 8 ETH.

  3. A moderator changes the price to 2.25 ETH due to the huge demand at a similar time as the user's public mint.

  4. The moderator's transaction executes first, resulting in the user to be charged all of his 9 ETH.


BVSS
Recommendation

Consider allowing users to provide a slippage input.

Remediation Comment

RISK ACCEPTED: The TAEX team has accepted the risk of this finding.

7.3 Cross-chain signature replay possible under specific conditions

//

Low

Description

The block chain ID is not included in the message hash which allows a cross-chain signature replay under specific conditions.


Upon using the Wert minting functionality, the message hash is generated as follows without including the chain ID. It is then validated against the Wert partner.


A cross-chain signature replay is possible when the below 2 conditions are met as the block chain ID is not included in the message hash:

  1. The contract has the same deployment address on all chains as the contract address is included in the message hash.

  2. The wert partner address is the same on all chains.


BVSS
Recommendation

If the conditions mentioned in the report are likely to occur in your specific context, then consider including the block chain ID in the message hash.

Remediation Comment

RISK ACCEPTED: The TAEX team has accepted the risk of this finding.

7.4 Unnecessary initialization of the current phase

//

Informational

Description

The current phase initialization is redundant as it is set to the default value of the enum.


The current phase gets set to paused in the initializer function. However, this is unnecessary as the paused phase is the default value in the enum.


As the paused phase is default one, then the code is simply overwriting the current phase with the value it had initially.

BVSS
Recommendation

Consider removing the line discussed in the report.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.5 Unnecessary initialization of an NFT's metadata

//

Informational

Description

Whenever an NFT is minted, its metadata gets initialized as follows:

tokenMetadata[tokenId] = TokenMetadata({ isRevealed: false, revealTimestamp: 0 });


However, this is completely unnecessary as both of the initialized values are the default values.

BVSS
Recommendation

Consider removing the initialization of token metadata.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.6 Unnecessary payable casts in multiple places

//

Informational

Description

Multiple places in the code conduct the following cast to a payable address. However, this cast is completely unnecessary as the CALL opcode does not require the address being called to be payable.

BVSS
Recommendation

Consider removing the payable casts.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.7 Floating pragma

//

Informational

Description

The contract in scope currently uses floating pragma versions ^0.8.22 which means that the code can be compiled by any compiler version that is greater than or equal to 0.8.22, and less than 0.9.0.


However, it is recommended that contracts should be deployed with the same compiler version and flags used during development and testing. Locking the pragma helps to ensure that contracts do not accidentally get deployed using another pragma. For example, an outdated pragma version might introduce bugs that affect the contract system negatively.


In this aspect, it is crucial to select the appropriate EVM version when it's intended to deploy the contracts on networks other than the Ethereum mainnet, which may not support these opcodes. Failure to do so could lead to unsuccessful contract deployments or transaction execution issues.

BVSS
Recommendation

Lock the pragma version to the same version used during development and testing. Additionally, make sure to specify the target EVM version when using Solidity versions from 0.8.20 and above if deploying to chains that may not support newly introduced opcodes. Additionally, it is crucial to stay informed about the opcode support of different chains to ensure smooth deployment and compatibility.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.8 Custom errors should be used

//

Informational

Description

In Solidity smart contract development, replacing hard-coded revert message strings with the Error() syntax is an optimization strategy that can significantly reduce gas costs. Hard-coded strings, stored on the blockchain, increase the size and cost of deploying and executing contracts.


The Error() syntax allows for the definition of reusable, parameterized custom errors, leading to a more efficient use of storage and reduced gas consumption. This approach not only optimizes gas usage during deployment and interaction with the contract but also enhances code maintainability and readability by providing clearer, context-specific error information.

BVSS
Recommendation

It is recommended to replace hard-coded revert strings in require statements for custom errors, which can be done following the logic below:


1. Standard require statement (to be replaced):

require(condition, "Condition not met");

2. Declare the error definition to state

error ConditionNotMet();

3. As currently is not possible to use custom errors in combination with require statements, the standard syntax is:

if (!condition) revert ConditionNotMet();

More information about this topic in the Official Solidity Documentation.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.9 Consider Using Named Mappings

//

Informational

Description

The project is using Solidity version ^0.8.22 which supports named mappings. Using named mappings can improve the readability and maintainability of the code by making the purpose of each mapping clearer. This practice helps developers and auditors understand the mappings' intent more easily.

BVSS
Recommendation

Consider refactoring the mappings to use named arguments, which will enhance code readability and make the purpose of each mapping more explicit.


For example, in the MAENFTCollection.sol contract, instead of declaring:

mapping(address => uint256) public addressMintCount;

It could be declared as:

mapping(address user => uint256 mintCount) public addressMintCount;

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

7.10 Functions that change state don't emit events

//

Informational

Description

The addToWhitelist() , removeFromWhitelist() , and setMoonPhase() functions are responsible for changing important contract state, however, they don't emit events.

BVSS
Recommendation

Modify the addToWhitelist() , removeFromWhitelist() , and setMoonPhase() functions, so that they emit proper events when called.

Remediation Comment

ACKNOWLEDGED: The TAEX team has acknowledged this finding.

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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