Formal Methods

Came across functions in Python that had inline annotation of arguments passed to the function and annotated return type as well. It looked so similar to Dafny and Lustre language that I’d learned in Formal Methods class in graduate school. Was a bit surprised that their exist such a feature…

(Blog with Danil Annenkov and Eske Hoy Nielsen) The Polygon network recently had a vulnerability which would allow hackers to create an arbitrary number of their MATIC tokens. The analysis above explains that this is due to a missing check that the sending address has enough balance. Such vulnerabilities are…

As a computer scientist specialised in formal methods I love the work that is being done by in Rust to create a programming language that is safe and robust. I would like to use my first post to show how we can use the Rust type system and its move…

Given it took me until October 2021 to post the list for 2020, thought I’d get a move on this year and post the list before the end of the year. A short list this year, inasmuch as I barely spent any time on “extracurricular” tech stuff. …

At Runtime Verification, K framework is the backbone of the company. Since the CEO of Runtime Verification, Grigore Rosu, started the K project back in 2003 for teaching purposes, the K framework has evolved, its user base has grown, and there are more use cases than ever in the ecosystem. …

Zesty Market recently completed an audit with Certora. Certora is a smart contract auditing company which offers a one-of-a-kind formal verification tool using Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT). If you’re intimidated by Formal Verification and Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT). Don’t be intimidated because this post will break it down in a…

Runtime Verification, a startup that uses runtime verification-based techniques to conduct security audits on virtual machines and smart contracts, has raised $5.3 million in a funding round led by IOSG Ventures. Investment came from a range of notable VC firms including Fenbushi Capital, Maven 11, Borderless Capital (Algorand), cFund (Cardano)…

How the Splunk Messaging as a Service team uses formal methods to improve system reliability and resilience. Much of Splunk’s data infrastructure is built on the data streaming platform of Apache Pulsar and its storage layer Apache BookKeeper. …

We stated in part 1 of this series, TLA+ is best employed during the design phase of a distributed system as it helps the engineer reason about the design, communicate the design to others and verify its correctness. In our case, the design and implementation were already in place but…