FEATURED POST
September 17, 2025
What is Sherlock? An Explainer for Builders and Teams
Sherlock is a smart contract security partner that unites audits, contests, bug bounties, and coverage into one model. Learn how we protect protocols from first launch through growth, and why continuous security is the foundation for the next era of onchain systems.
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What is Sherlock? An Explainer for Builders and Teams
Sherlock is a smart contract security partner that unites audits, global contests, bug bounties, and financial coverage into one aligned model. This combination delivers protection that follows protocols through development, launch, and growth - keeping clients secure at every stage.
There comes a time in every team’s journey when a project is ready to launch or existing code is ready for a major upgrade. It’s a moment that carries excitement and weight: where decisions ripple out to users, communities, and investors who put their trust in the system. At this stage, security is what separates fragile experiments from resilient infrastructure built to last.
Most providers approach that moment with a point-in-time audit - a core step, but one that only captures a snapshot in time. Sherlock was created to go further. Formed in 2021, Sherlock combines collaborative reviews with elite researchers, global contests that apply adversarial pressure, bug bounties to guard live code, and financial coverage that aligns incentives. Together, these elements form a backbone of trust that helps teams ship with confidence and scale securely.”
How Sherlock Works
Sherlock’s model is built on the idea that no single approach can provide lasting security. Instead, we combine multiple layers that reinforce one another. Every engagement starts with collaborative audits, where elite researchers work closely with teams to identify critical vulnerabilities. Those findings are then stress-tested through global audit contests, which bring hundreds of adversarial perspectives to the same codebase, surfacing issues that individual reviews might miss.
Once a protocol goes live, Sherlock’s protection continues. Bug bounty programs extend coverage beyond launch, incentivizing researchers to keep looking for flaws as the code evolves. Financial coverage ties everything together, aligning incentives by backing Sherlock’s work with capital. Together, these pieces form a system that protects protocols before, during, and after launch - turning security from a one-time event into an ongoing backbone teams can rely on.
Collaborative Audits
Sherlock’s collaborative audits pair protocols directly with elite researchers who specialize in smart contract security. Unlike traditional black-box reviews, this process is interactive and context-rich, allowing auditors to understand the design choices behind the code. The result is higher-quality findings, stronger remediation guidance, and cleaner code heading into launch.
Audit Contests
To push code further, Sherlock hosts large-scale contests that mobilize the world’s best independent researchers. Hundreds of eyes attack the same codebase under adversarial conditions, surfacing vulnerabilities that even the most skilled individual might miss. Contests create scale, diversity of perspective, and a competitive incentive structure that drives deeper coverage.
Bug Bounties
Security doesn’t stop at deployment. Sherlock’s bug bounty programs extend protection to live code, incentivizing researchers to continue looking for issues after launch. This creates an on-demand feedback loop between builders and security experts, ensuring vulnerabilities are surfaced before attackers can exploit them.
Financial Coverage
Sherlock is the first audit firm to align incentives by backing its work with financial coverage. If a vulnerability is missed, Sherlock’s coverage ensures there is real capital on the line (up to $500,000 in coverage) creating accountability and confidence that the security process isn’t just theoretical. This approach gives teams added assurance that their security partner is accountable and fully aligned with their success.
Who Sherlock Protects
Sherlock works with teams across the spectrum of onchain finance - from emerging projects preparing for their first launch to established networks securing billions in value. What unites them isn’t size, but responsibility: every protocol that touches user funds, coordinates validators, or underpins financial activity carries risk that must be secured. Sherlock’s model adapts to that reality, scaling protection to fit both growing startups and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
The platform secures:
- Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains – core infrastructure teams preparing or upgrading network-level code
- Restaking and staking networks – projects securing validator sets and pooled capital at scale
- Stablecoin issuers – teams managing collateral and maintaining price stability under constant pressure
- Lending and borrowing protocols – builders designing complex money markets with systemic exposure
- DEXs and derivatives exchanges – trading platforms where even small bugs can cascade across liquidity pools
- Yield platforms – aggregators and vaults optimizing returns on pooled assets
- Emerging DeFi primitives – experimental teams testing new financial mechanisms in live environments
Sherlock partners with these teams to deliver the depth, continuity, and accountability their users demand - ensuring security keeps pace with the scale of their ambitions. While these verticals are the most common, Sherlock’s model is built to support any protocol carrying meaningful security responsibilities in the Web3 space.
The Future of Protocol Security
Audits remain the foundation of protocol security - every serious team needs them, and Sherlock continues to treat them as a core pillar. But protocols don’t stop evolving once code is pushed live. Protocols changes, upgrades ship, and live systems face new attack surfaces every day. That’s why Sherlock built a platform that extends security across the full journey, making audits stronger by surrounding them with contests, bounties, and financial coverage.
The vision behind this model is to provide security that scales with the growth of onchain systems. Through aligning researchers, incentives, and capital, Sherlock creates trust strong enough to support the next wave of adoption. Our role is to transcend simply catching vulnerabilities - we aim to give builders the confidence to innovate and users the assurance that what they rely on is protected.
Conclusion
Sherlock was formed on the belief that security must keep pace with innovation. Audits, contests, bounties, and coverage aren’t separate services, but parts of a system designed to protect protocols through every stage of their journey.
These layers work together to deliver continuous assurance that scales with the needs of builders - from first deployments to network-level upgrades. The outcome is trust strong enough to support the next generation of onchain systems and the billions of people they aim to serve.
Contact our team today to learn how Sherlock can help protect your protocol from launch through growth.
