Gas Optimization Audit: Deribit

In an audit conducted on October 17, 2026, Deribit's smart contracts were analyzed for gas optimization potential. The report, prepared by a senior DeFi security research team, examined the latest mainnet version (v2.4.1) and L2 Optimism proxy contracts. The audit focused on key components such as the core trading engine, margin management, governance upgrades, and L2 bridge.

The analysis identified several gas inefficiencies across the contracts. These include redundant storage reads/writes, inefficient ABI encoding, unbounded external calls, the use of `address.transfer`, missing unchecked blocks for safe arithmetic, and inefficient event logging. Each of these issues has the potential to increase gas costs per transaction, with estimated savings ranging from $0.08M to $1.1M annually.

The most significant issues, such as unbounded loops and inefficient calldata handling, could be exploited by attackers to increase transaction costs for users. However, it is important to note that these inefficiencies do not directly lead to fund loss but can significantly degrade the economic efficiency of the platform.

Three primary recommendations were proposed to address these issues. First, a hard cap on batch-processing loops should be introduced to prevent out-of-gas attacks. Second, bytes calldata should be replaced with tightly-typed parameters, and inefficient encoding methods should be replaced with more efficient alternatives. Third, unnecessary address transfers should be replaced with call{value: ...} calls to avoid extra gas stipends.

Implementing these recommendations could result in an estimated annual gas saving of $2.5M at current gas prices. These changes would not only improve the platform's gas efficiency but also reduce operational costs, enhance user experience, and provide a competitive advantage during periods of high network congestion.