EY Focuses on Blockchain Security with Launch of Smart Contract Analyzer

Last Wednesday, accountancy giant Ernst & Young (EY) launched its token and smart contract review service. The tool will allow companies and individuals to evaluate smart contracts and tokens for known security risks. 

EY initially unveiled their Smart Contract Analyzer service in April and has spent the last eight months testing the service in private beta. Now finally launched for public testing, the tool will allow investors to review their tokens' code and monitor changes in the software, EY says. 

Developed by EY Blockchain Security Lab in Israel, the software works for tokens and contracts before they launch and after they are published online on a public blockchain. Using the new tool, investors can now track changes in their software to ensure tokens and smart contracts are secure and meet industry standards. Additionally, tokens can be stress-tested in a multitude of transaction scenarios using data collected from the ethereum blockchain to ensure their reliability. 

“Our clients are increasingly entrusting key enterprise business processes and valuable investments to software code,” Brody said back in April. “We don’t run enterprise computing systems without anti-virus tools and it only makes sense to run blockchain-based investment systems with smart contract and token testing tools”, Amen to that. 

Also unveiled in April, the second iteration of the Blockchain Analyzer upped the number of supported protocols, including private blockchains, and enabled analysis of privacy-enhancing, zero-knowledge proof-based transactions. 

In reality, while there are also legal and functional obstacles to enterprises adopting public blockchains, the technology is still nascent. While we're only experiencing the beginnings of what will be the future of fin-tech transactions, unproven industries still pose both security and institutional risks to many large financial institutions. This is largely the reason why new solutions are more palatable for testing in controlled environments.

The launch of EY’s smart contract tool is another sign of the financial industry’s sustained investment in blockchain technologies. The continued development and release of security testing tools like these provide the much-needed infrastructure for a future where blockchain-based banking solutions are not all too uncommon. With many obstacles to overcome, the emergence of safe and reliable security to mitigate risk such as EY’s analyzer, secure key management, theft insurance, etc. will be key to  the rapid acceptance and expansion of the industry.