IDEX, a decentralized exchange, recently underwent a security audit by Qauntstamp prior to the release of its 2.0 mainnet. The exchange's CEO Alex Wearn emphasized the importance of security audits to Cointelegraph:
Depositing funds into contracts that the authors themselves state are unaudited, and were rushed to market in a matter of weeks, is clearly a dangerous game. There have been quite a few hacks and instances of lost funds as evidence of these potential risks.
Wearn was alluding to the fact that many popular DeFi projects have launch unaudited — a decision which has led to catastrophic results more than once. In IDEX's case, the project passed its code review with no major vulnerabilities discovered. Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma told Cointelegraph:
IDEX 2.0 has very high documentation and code quality.
Wearn, discussing the prevailing attitudes concerning security audits in the DeFi space, observed that the entire crypto industry is susceptible t vulnerabilities:
With respect to DeFi, I think the space as a whole has some risk (arguably all of crypto, even Bitcoin, is risky). Even the well-established projects are relatively new and it's impossible to be certain that there aren't any bugs. Time in market and open source code is the best way to help minimize these risks.
Despite the troubles faced by many DeFi projects, new service continue to launch with no end to the space's momentum in sight.