PwC Switzerland blockchain auditing with ChainSecurity. In a press release, PricewaterhouseCoopers Switzerland is now providing auditing services to blockchain networks to improve security and other risks.
- The team from ChainSecurity AG, an ETH Zurich spin-off and former market leader in smart contract and blockchain audits, is coming to PwC Switzerland.
- This will make PwC Switzerland the world’s foremost provider of blockchain smart contract assurance.
- The new arrangement will strengthen Switzerland’s international leadership as a centre of blockchain.
The team from ChainSecurity AG, a spin-off of ETH Zurich – recently ranked as the world’s second-best university for computer science – is joining PwC Switzerland. Market leader in smart contract and blockchain audits ChainSecurity AG was established in October 2017 as a spin-off of ETH (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zurich. ChainSecurity provided technical audits of smart contracts and blockchain projects using state-of-the-art security methodologies for identifying weak points and automated auditors able to formally verify the correctness of smart contracts in terms of their individual business logic. The company worked with more than 75 blockchain companies in America, Asia and Europe to establish itself as the top brand in blockchain security.
ChainSecurity was an active member of the blockchain security community. It was behind the discovery of a subtle security vulnerability in an upgrade to Ethereum, thanks to which it was possible to avoid a major security breach back in January 2019. Added to this, the company’s founders headed the security working groups of the Crypto Valley Association, the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance and the Swiss Blockchain Federation. ChainSecurity also founded Swiss Blockchain Security, an initiative bringing together all the providers of blockchain security in Switzerland. This work for the various bodies and organisations will continue.
Leading provider of blockchain smart contract assurance
The addition of ChainSecurity will make PwC Switzerland the world’s leading provider of blockchain smart contract assurance. “As part of PwC Switzerland, the ChainSecurity team will concentrate on accelerating PwC Switzerland’s blockchain audits, including technical audits of smart contracts and blockchain platforms and risk assurance services for clients holding crypto investments,” says Andreas Eschbach, Partner and Leader Risk Assurance, PwC Switzerland and Europe.
Where do smart contracts come in?
Smart contracts are built to act on behalf of two parties for a specific transaction (or type of transaction) on the blockchain. The use cases are very applicable for things that already happen today, like buying stock options, where you pay a fee and agree to buy (or not buy) a stock based on it’s valuation on a specific date. Filling out your voting card. Tracking the package you mailed to your mom. The only difference is that instead of these agreements being tracked by one institution, they are validated by records dispersed across the blockchain.
But, are smart contracts really going to hold up? One day, we read that blockchain is ‘immutable’. The next that it got hacked. So, what’s the reality? At the end of the day, the security and reliability of any smart contract comes down to how it was built. It’s only as strong as the code that underpins it.
With more and more use cases every day, there are clear indicators that blockchain will be a big player in our future, it is important that companies shape what that future looks like and have the confidence to explore how smart contracts and blockchain can help them transform what they do. PwC Switzerland blockchain auditing intends on making it safer to implement blockchain in the future.
