Development and Investigation of Smart Contract Reentrancy Attack Protection Methods

Abstract

Smart contracts automate blockchain transactions but are vulnerable to reentrancy attacks, where an attacker repeatedly calls a function before the contract updates its state, stealing funds. A well-known case is the 2016 DAO exploit, which caused a loss of $60 million.This study investigates methods to protect contracts from such attacks through a literature review, a case study comparing a vulnerable and a fixed contract, and evaluation of analysis tools (Mythril, Slither, Securify, Sereum, BlockWatchdog).The expected results include identifying effective coding patterns (like checks-effects-interactions and reentrancy guards), assessing tool accuracy, and providing secure development guidelines. All experiments will be conducted safely on test networks.