Options protocol audit
An options protocol prices a payout today and pays it at expiry, from margin that has to hold the whole way. Guardian audits that math, from IVX’s options AMM to Kairos’s interest rate swaps and Strata’s tranches.
DeFi audits for



Dolomite
Olympus
Onchain · Options and Derivatives Audit
What a DeFi options audit covers.
- Option pricing and greeks Binomial and Black-Scholes math, delta and vega valued at the asset price, and time steps that still work in the last seconds before expiry.
- Writer margin and collateral Maintenance margin with spot and premium in their right places, collateral swaps that cannot leave a writer insolvent, and assets delisted mid-trade.
- Premium and fee accounting Premiums credited once, borrowing fees charged only while an option is live, and fees counted once in health checks.
- Exercise, expiry and settlement The settlement price at expiry, expired options cleared from margin, and settlement loops that fit in one block.
- Oracles and volatility inputs Staleness and grace periods, volatility and rate updates that can be sandwiched, and signed reports paired with the data they were priced on.
- Liquidation of short options Liquidations that position counts, rounding, approvals or swaps cannot block, and shortfalls that land where the design says.
- LP pools and option AMMs Pool NAV that counts hedges and open positions at what settlement pays, utilization caps, first depositors and withdrawal queues.
- Interest rate swaps and maturities Fixed and floating legs, each rate source’s compounding convention, settlement caps, and maturity indices that stay fixed once set.
- Tranches and structured products Senior and junior NAV splits, gains and losses moved between tranches as the spec says, and reserve accounting.
- Leveraged token rebalancing Exchange rates across mint, redeem and bridging, target leverage math, and rebalance orders that cannot be sandwiched or cancelled for profit.
- Vault integrations ERC-4626 and Morpho Vault V2 adapters that value positions at what they can realize, and force-deallocation paths anyone can call.
- Admin keys and parameters Who can set volatility, risk curves, supported collateral and market terms, with their thresholds and timelocks.
Covers options AMMs, rate swap markets, tranches, leveraged tokens and the vaults that hold them, on Ethereum, L2s, Avalanche and HyperEVM. Keepers, rebalancers and price publishers are reviewed separately, in an Offchain Automation Pentest.
Public findings
What Guardian has found in derivatives code.
Each card links a finding in a public Guardian report. The two IVX findings were outstanding at its September 2023 report date; every other finding here was resolved.
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C-01Strata · Critical
Taking reserve out in USDe debited the books by the USDe amount, then sent that same number of sUSDe shares. With sUSDe above 1, a 1 USDe withdrawal sent the treasury about 1.889 USDe while accounting recorded 1, breaking the tranches’ internal accounting.
Reserves Read the finding C-01 in the Strata Tranches report
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DIEMT-2IVX · High · Pending
Fees for a trade’s delta were valued at the asset price, but fees for its vega were not. The vega part of the fee came out negligible, so trades that loaded the AMM with vega paid far less than intended.
Greeks Read the finding DIEMT-2 in the IVX Options Protocol report
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H-01Synthetix TLX V2 · High
A redemption pulled margin from the leveraged token’s Synthetix position at a Chainlink price that had not yet caught up with the market. An attacker could size a redemption that passed the margin check at the stale price and left the position liquidatable once the feed updated.
Liquidations Read the finding H-01 in the Synthetix TLX V2 report
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H-02Synthetix TLX V2 · High
The decaying redemption fee stored its five-minute duration as 300e18, so elapsed time divided by it always rounded to zero. Every redeemer paid close to the maximum fee, however long they had held.
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DIEMT-1IVX · Critical · Pending
The binomial pricer set its time step to the seconds left to expiry divided by 15. In an option’s last 15 seconds the step rounded to zero and pricing reverted, blocking opens, closes and liquidations for every option.
Expiry Read the finding DIEMT-1 in the IVX Options Protocol report
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H-07Kairos · High
Signed risk-premium reports were not tied to the base rate they were modeled on. A relayer could hold a still-fresh report until the base rate moved, then trade a pairing the reporters never priced, at the expense of LP backing.
Rate inputs Read the finding H-07 in the Kairos Follow-Up Review report
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H-02Kairos · High
LP shares were priced from full mark-to-market swap PnL, but settlement is capped by the collateral each swap actually holds. An LP could withdraw against gains the pool would never collect, leaving the shortfall to the LPs who stayed.
Rate swaps Read the finding H-02 in the Kairos Protocol Review report
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H-06Kairos · High
A swap bucket could hold expired and live positions together, and expired swaps were valued as if still running. Forced exits then booked the wrong reserve, which a co-LP could capture.
Maturities Read the finding H-06 in the Kairos Follow-Up Review report
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H-03Strata · High
When the senior tranche reported a loss, the code added it to the junior tranche’s old NAV instead of its updated one. The loss was neither taken from seniors nor credited to juniors, against the spec for both.
Tranches Read the finding H-03 in the Strata Tranches report
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H-01Synthetix TLX · High
Once market skew passed the price-impact tolerance, every rebalance order the TLX vault committed could be cancelled. An attacker could mint small amounts to trigger orders, cancel each one and collect the keeper reward from the vault’s margin.
Rebalancing Read the finding H-01 in the Synthetix TLX report
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H-03Bounce Tech · High
Bridged USDT0 was valued at the spot USDT/USDC price, so a leveraged token’s value jumped in a step when funds moved to HyperCore. With that price moving up to 2% and a 0.3% redemption fee, minting and redeeming at once could extract funds.
Leveraged tokens Read the finding H-03 in the Bounce Tech Leveraged Token Protocol report
Onchain · How it runs
Two teams, and every payout written as code.
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01 / Two teams
Two independent teams, one scope.
Team A pairs expert manual review with the fuzzing suite. Team B runs Helix across every corner. Each cross-checks the other.
- Expert manual review
- Competitive incentives
- Cross-checked findings
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02 / Helix AI Auditor
Helix, the leading AI Auditor.
Hundreds of parallel agents spend billions of tokens across the entire codebase. Only human-verified findings reach the report.
- Billions of tokens
- Human-guided context
- Human-triaged findings
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03 / Invariant fuzzing
An invariant suite around your payouts.
Core safety properties become executable invariants, fuzzed across every reachable state. For derivatives, those are the rules that keep every payout backed.
- Total NAV equals tranche NAVs plus reserves
- Notional matches leverage times margin
- Exchange rate never zero
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04 / Pricing inputs
The feeds, and the bots that act on them.
Volatility, rate and price inputs are read against the math that consumes them. Rebalancers and keepers that run offchain get their own Offchain Automation Pentest.
- Volatility and rate updates
- Signed reports and their timing
- Rebalancer and contract drift
The suite stays with your code for every later change. Synthetix TLX V2’s suite ran 22 invariants, each 10 million+ times. Offchain code gets its own review: in Bounce Tech’s automation review, the offchain service sized target leverage from position size instead of margin used.
Published work
Derivatives protocols Guardian has reviewed.
- ReportsIVXAn options AMM on Arbitrum and Avalanche: 7 Criticals and 9 Highs.
- Client storyIVX in the GMX ecosystemAn options book valued against the GMX positions that hedge it.
- ReportsKairosInterest rate swaps on Aave, Compound and Morpho rates: 28 Highs.
- ReportsStrataSenior and junior tranches over sUSDe: 1 Critical and 5 Highs, all resolved.
- Client storyStrata in the Ethena ecosystemTranches that split Ethena’s yield into senior and junior claims.
- ReportSynthetix TLXThe first TLX review: leveraged tokens on Synthetix Perps V3, with 3 Highs.
- ReportSynthetix TLX V2Leveraged tokens on Synthetix perps, with 22 invariants fuzzed.
- ReportsBounce TechLeveraged tokens on Hyperliquid perps, and the automation that runs them.
“Guardian was an incredible partner in our audit. For each finding, they provided great detail as well as practical recommendations. Highly recommend!”
“Guardian brought rigorous security to our Bounce Tech smart contracts, finding edge cases and guiding fixes with clear communication.”
Resource Hub
Before you book a derivatives audit.
- PatternsCritical DeFi vulnerabilitiesSix Critical patterns from real Guardian audits, each with its root cause, attack and fix.
- ExplainerOracle manipulationHow spot and TWAP prices get moved, and what holds.
- ExplainerFront runningHow attackers get ahead of a pending transaction, with two real findings.
- ExplainerRounding errorsTruncating division, and the real bugs it causes.
- ChecklistERC-4626 vault checklistShare pricing checks, with Kairos’s NAV finding among the examples.
- GuideFoundry invariant testingHandlers, ghost variables and actors for your own suite.
- DataDeFi offchain findingsWhat pentests find in keepers and backends, Bounce Tech included.
- ExplainerFinding statusesResolved, acknowledged and pending, and what each one tells you.
Questions
Options protocol audit questions
What does an options protocol audit cover?
The contracts that price, margin, settle and liquidate positions, the LP pool or vault behind them, and the roles that set volatility and risk parameters. Keepers and rebalancers run offchain, so they are scoped as an Offchain Automation Pentest. Vanguard includes offchain coverage as assessment credit.
Do you audit structured products and vaults that hold derivatives?
Yes. Kairos’s adapters let a Morpho Vault V2 allocate into its swap markets. Guardian found that anyone could settle a vault-owned swap directly, so a shareholder could redeem at the pre-loss share price in the same transaction. It was resolved.
Which invariants do you fuzz on derivatives protocols?
The ones that keep payouts backed. On Synthetix’s TLX V2, four failed under fuzzing, including “Successful delayed orders execution should result in leverage close to target”. On Strata, “Total assets should decrease after reduce reserve” failed.
How long does an options protocol audit take?
Six auditors reviewed IVX’s options protocol over nine days in September 2023. Kairos’s Protocol Review window, March 9 to July 9, 2026, spans several reviews with fix time in between. How long a smart contract audit takes covers lead time and fix review.
Does the audit cover changes after launch?
Guardian reviews your fixes before it delivers the report. Later changes, such as a new collateral asset or a rewritten pricing module, are not part of the Smart Contract Audit. The invariant suite stays with you to rerun on them, and Vanguard adds six months of update review.
Smart Contract Audit
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- OffchainOpSec AuditKeys, signers, privileged roles, and critical operations.
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