EDIT 18 May 2020:
I have created a ZCS proposal for the audit for discussion!
We’ve been scoping out various audit firms. The ones that seem to be the most promising are Trail of Bits and SmartDEC.
Trail of Bits are pretty top notch guys. They’re the peeps who are auditing Zoom right now and they’ve done a lot of blockchain work (Parity) plus have the necessary cryptographers. They’re my first choice. A decent audit with them would cost around 64k USD though there’s some flexibility depending on the level of thoroughness. The call with Dan Guido was a very fruitful one.
SmartDEC came recommended from Beam and Grin++. They’re much more competitive in rates but communication with them has been rather patchy. Beam and Grin spoke highly of them but another contact whom I trust says that they basically have a checklist that they go through. We are still waiting for a quote from them (the last time they went silent for a month).
Least Authority are pretty good as well (they audited Zcash and ProgPOW) but cost wise they’re the highest. For the price, Trail of Bits seems to be a better bet.
The purpose of the audit is two fold
a) To give us comfort that Lelantus and its implementation is secure
b) To meet requirements for big exchanges that often require a software audit.
I personally feel that Trail of Bits will meet both of these requirements. Some money can be saved if we focus only on the implementation and not the cryptography. SmartDEC was indicating that they would probably not have capacity to audit the cryptography.
There are other firms we also approached but didn’t really feel assured from our communications that they knew their stuff.
This costs money and while the core team does have reserves, it is a bit risky to use this lest the bear market extends.
We have received offers to get in new ‘seed investors’ but personally I rather we not as we are just moving past that. We can take a loan possibly but it would be good to partially raise some funds from the community.
What is everyone’s thoughts on this? What would make you want to donate? Would special exclusive merchandise for you make it more attractive?
Appreciate everyone’s feedback!