Aerodrome Finance launches $400K public audit contest with Sherlock ahead of major upgrade

Aerodrome Finance is putting $400,000 on the table for anyone who can find bugs in its upcoming Aero upgrade. The three-week public audit contest, run through Sherlock’s Audit Engine, kicks off August 31 and represents the last major security checkpoint before the protocol’s anticipated September mainnet launch. What the contest actually involves The audit contest is the first open-participant engagement using Sherlock’s Audit Engine, a platform that blends AI-assisted analysis with human security researchers. Sherlock introduced the Audit Engine on August 18, positioning it as a new model for coordinated security reviews. Aerodrome’s Aero upgrade gets the honor of being its inaugural public deployment. The structure is straightforward: independent security researchers comb through the Aero codebase over three weeks, flagging vulnerabilities in exchange for a share of the $400K prize pool. The bigger the bug, the bigger the payout. Prior to opening the contest to the public, the protocol ran multiple rounds of private audits through both ChainSecurity and Sherlock. Neither firm found critical or high-severity vulnerabilities during those reviews. The Aero upgrade, explained The upg...