I’m currently in my final year as a student, and I recently found myself drawn into something I never expected to enjoy: formal verification. I want to share a little story about how I got here, what I’ve been learning, and why I believe formal verification might be one of the most exciting and valuable skills in the world of smart contracts and blockchain.
At first, formal methods felt intimidating. I come from a non-mathematical background, and the idea of writing "proofs" with symbols and logic felt way out of my league. But I was curious. I started asking myself: how do we really know a smart contract does exactly what it’s supposed to do?
This question led me to the world of formal verification. a field where we use math and logic to prove that a piece of code behaves correctly in all cases, not just during tests. And that instantly clicked with me. As I learned about the huge number of hacks and bugs in DeFi, it became clear how important this kind of work is.
I began my journey with a book called How to Prove It, which taught me the basics of logic and proofs. At first, I had to go slowly and repeat a lot, but with consistency, I found myself really enjoying the process. Every small concept I understood gave me a feeling of confidence and clarity.
Then I started learning Coq, a proof assistant, by following the Software Foundations book. It’s like writing code, but for logic — and it’s surprisingly satisfying when you see "Proof completed." pop up after a block of reasoning. Right now, I’m practicing writing simple logic proofs that relate to real-world situations, including the basics of smart contract behaviors.
I still consider myself a beginner, but I’m committed to mastering this. My dream is to work in the blockchain space as a formal verification engineer — helping teams build safer and more trustworthy protocols. I’m especially interested in DeFi and how we can prove things like fund safety, state transitions, and protocol invariants.
If you’re also learning, or already working in formal verification or smart contract security, I’d love to connect and learn from you! And if you’re just curious about this field, I’d be happy to share what I’ve learned so far.
Thanks for reading my story! 😊