A Systematic Review of Security Innovations in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Using Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) represents the new generation of blockchain financial services by developing an open-access financial model without banking or lending institution intermediaries. However, DeFi's open feature threatens its security, making it vulnerable and a target for different attack types. In this systematic review, we present the security of DeFi by selecting fifteen studies from 2020 to 2024 to determine and display the security solutions' effectiveness in identifying the attacks, focusing on various DeFi components such as smart contracts, DEX, AMM, governance, AMM-based DEX, and smart contracts with (DEX, Oracle); detecting different kinds of attacks (e.g., price manipulation, Oracle manipulation, flash loan) using detection tools (e.g., DeFort, CRPWarner, FORAY); we find out that 40% of the selected studies focus on Oracle manipulation attack, 33.33% for price manipulation and flash loan attacks separately, followed by 13.33% for (MEV, rug pull, front-running, Token Leakage, and deep logical bugs), 6.67% for (EEV, reentrancy, sandwich, access control, and state derailment defects). We compare the studies based on the attack type that they detected using four state-of-the-art types of research, such as DeFiScope, FlashSyn, SecPLF, and DeFiGuard; this indicates the concentration of the trend studies is on accuracy and combining AI in DeFi security, or aggregating the existing tools with it, giving an overview of DeFi components' security, underlining the gaps in the attack types that future research can address to build more robust, trustworthy, and secure DeFi systems.