SmarTrim: Symbolic Execution for Smart Contracts Powered by Redundant Transaction-Sequence Pruning

We present SmarTrim, a new symbolic execution technique for detecting vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Smart contracts require rigorous safety validation since flaws in them can cause significant financial loss. Numerous symbolic execution techniques, which generate vulnerable transaction sequences to trigger and help understand vulnerabilities, have been extensively studied to enhance the security and safety of smart contracts. However, their performance remains unsatisfactory due to the extremely large search space for transaction sequences. To mitigate this issue, SmarTrim introduces a novel technique that safely reduces the search space by detecting and pruning redundant transaction sequences. Experimental results show that SmarTrim greatly outperforms eleven state-of-the-art analyzers in detecting critical vulnerabilities in real-world smart contracts.