The Ethereum network team has published a guest series of posts from the leading developer of the Vyper language under the pseudonym big_tech_sux. The author has considered in detail the critical role of formal verification in the era of rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies. The progress of large language models makes mathematical proof of program correctness much more accessible to a wide range of specialists. For smart contracts that manage billions of dollars of user funds, formal verification is gradually becoming an absolute necessity. This mathematical method allows you to prove the correctness of the program for all possible execution scenarios. This distinguishes the approach from traditional testing, which covers only pre-prepared cases. The author gave an illustrative example with a simple division by two function, for which it is mathematically proved that it is impossible to exceed the input value.

This technique is able to find extremely rare errors that are practically not detected by routine testing. Formal verification can reveal one unique case out of a quadrillion that will never show up in standard checks. However, it is precisely this hidden scenario that can lead to a catastrophic failure of the entire financial system. Until recently, using this approach required the work of large teams of highly qualified experts. Experts created complex mathematical models of programs and carried out non-trivial proofs. Modern large language models significantly simplify this laborious process as we approach general artificial intelligence. The author acknowledges that the transformation of the program code into a formal model may still contain inaccuracies. The development of neural networks simultaneously increases the efficiency of both defenders and potential attackers.

The developer recalled the discovery of zero-day vulnerabilities by the yet-to-be-released OpenAI model. The vulnerabilities found made it possible to successfully bypass several levels of protection for complex systems at once. Formal verification allows you to significantly shift the current advantage in favor of infrastructure defenders. Attackers only need to find one sequence of input data to successfully hack the system. Defenders can use mathematical proofs to prove their resistance to all possible input data. That is why formal verification becomes a prerequisite for mission-critical software. This publication continues an important discussion started earlier by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The founder of the network is actively discussing the prospects of using artificial intelligence for formal code verification.