yAudit YearnBoostedStaker Recheck Review

Yearn BoostedStaker is a new contract template designed to be a more interesting staking system that rewards long-term alignment more-so than previous systems. The contract is meant to become the primary staking contract for Yearn locker products: yCRV and yPRISMA. The protocol is designed to boost the weight of deposits week by week until the max boost is reached.

Week	Weight	Boost
0 (deposit week)	50	0.5x boost
1	100	1x boost
2	150	1.5x boost
3	200	2x boost
4 (final growth week)	250	2.5x boost
5 ...n	250	2.5x boost

The YearnBoostedStaker contract Repo were reviewed over 4 days. The code review was performed by 3 auditors between Jan 29 and Feb 1, 2024. The repository was under active development during the review, but the review was limited to the latest commit at the start of the review. This was commit a836d7bc6b105aec867c953c4611247d423d5e79 for the yPrisma repo.

Scope

The scope of the review consisted of the following contracts at the specific commit:

contracts
└── YearnBoostedStaker.sol

After the findings were presented to the Yearn Finance team, fixes were made and included in several PRs.

This review is a code review to identify potential vulnerabilities in the code. The reviewers did not investigate security practices or operational security and assumed that privileged accounts could be trusted. The reviewers did not evaluate the security of the code relative to a standard or specification. The review may not have identified all potential attack vectors or areas of vulnerability.

yAudit and the auditors make no warranties regarding the security of the code and do not warrant that the code is free from defects. yAudit and the auditors do not represent nor imply to third parties that the code has been audited nor that the code is free from defects. By deploying or using the code, Yearn Finance and users of the contracts agree to use the code at their own risk.

Code Evaluation Matrix

Category	Mark	Description
Access Control	Good	Proper access control mechanisms are in place, ensuring that only authorized entities can execute sensitive functions.
Mathematics	Good	Arithmetic operations are securely handled, mitigating risks like overflow/underflow and ensuring precision.
Complexity	Average	The contract maintains a balance between functionality and complexity, minimizing potential attack vectors due to overly complex code.
Libraries	Average	Low usage of libraries that match the code's average complexity. Utilizes a well-tested external library once where it is appropriate.
Decentralization	Good	The contract design aligns with decentralization principles, avoiding single points of failure or control.
Code stability	Good	No changes where made to the contract during the review.
Documentation	Average	Comprehensive presentation is provided in the README, NatSpec comments are available for every function of the contract.
Monitoring	Good	Contract has proper events emitted on changes, facilitating real-time monitoring and tracking of activities.
Testing and verification	Low	Given the complexity of the design, more testing could help improve confidence in the codebase.

Findings Explanation

Findings are broken down into sections by their respective impact:

Critical, High, Medium, Low impact
- These are findings that range from attacks that may cause loss of funds, impact control/ownership of the contracts, or cause any unintended consequences/actions that are outside the scope of the requirements.
Gas savings
- Findings that can improve the gas efficiency of the contracts.
Informational
- Findings including recommendations and best practices.

Critical Findings

None.

High Findings

None.

Medium Findings

None.

Low Findings

1. Low - MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS can be set to 0 days

When deploying YearnBoostedStaker, MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS immutable can be set to 0 days which can lead to unexpected behaviour.

Technical Details

It is possible to set MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS when deploying the contract. This leads to interesting behaviour.

For example: Deploying YearnBoostedStaker with MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS as 0.

Then Alice deposits 100e18 tokens at week 0. After 20 has passed, Alice weight is now 1050e18, which doesn't seem correct.

Impact

Low.

Recommendation

We suggest to guard against setting 0 days in constructor of the contract to avoid issues with weight calculation.

Developer Response

Added condition to require statement.

2. Low - `stakeToken.transferFrom()` in `_deposit()` method should be moved lower down by the call stack

stakeToken.transferFrom() is called at the very top of the _deposit() function. The same applies to the depositAsWeighted() function.

Technical Details

This breaks CEI pattern, because interaction is done on the very top of the callstack.
This will generate dust in the contract, because transfer is made before the rounding calculation is done.

Impact

Low.

Recommendation

Move stakeToken.transferFrom() in _deposit() function to the line after the rounding is being made. This will fix the dust problem.

Developer Response

Moved near bottom of function.

Gas Saving Findings

1. Gas - Unnecessary check when updating an account's week bitmap

The logic to update the week bitmap checks that weight is greater than zero, a condition that is always true.

Technical Details

In _deposit() and depositAsWeighted(), the amount is required to be greater than 1, and since weight is half of that, then weight >= 1.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

Remove the weight > 0 check.

-   if (previous == 0 && weight > 0) {
+   if (previous == 0) {
        // We flip the far right bit to indicate an update occurred in current week.
        acctData.updateWeeksBitmap += 1;
    }

    // Only update storage bitmap if bit at target position needs to be flipped.
-   if (bitmap & mask != mask && weight > 0) {
+   if (bitmap & mask != mask) {
        acctData.updateWeeksBitmap = bitmap ^ mask; // Flip single bit.
    }

Developer Response

Updated both lines to remove weight check.

In _deposit(), the previous weight is conditionally loaded if the pending stake is greater than zero, which is always true as it is updated before the check.

Technical Details

The implementation of _deposit() loads the previous weight from accountWeeklyRealized only if the pendingStake is not zero (line 126).

118:         uint weight = _amount >> 1;
119:         _amount = weight << 1; // This helps prevent balance/weight discrepancies.
120:
121:         acctData.pendingStake += uint112(weight);
122:         globalGrowthRate += uint112(weight);
123:
124:         uint realizeWeek = systemWeek + MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS;
125:         uint previous;
126:         if (acctData.pendingStake != 0) previous = accountWeeklyRealized[_account][realizeWeek]; // Only SLOAD if needed.

However, pendingStake is updated at line 121 with the weight for the current deposit, causing this variable to always be different from zero.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

Invert the order of the operations.

    uint weight = _amount >> 1;
    _amount = weight << 1; // This helps prevent balance/weight discrepancies.

+   uint realizeWeek = systemWeek + MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS;
+   uint previous;
+   if (acctData.pendingStake != 0) previous = accountWeeklyRealized[_account][realizeWeek]; // Only SLOAD if needed.

    acctData.pendingStake += uint112(weight);
    globalGrowthRate += uint112(weight);

-   uint realizeWeek = systemWeek + MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS;
-   uint previous;
-   if (acctData.pendingStake != 0) previous = accountWeeklyRealized[_account][realizeWeek]; // Only SLOAD if needed.

Developer Response

I don't really understand what is meant by "Invert the order of operations" for this. However, I've removed the 0 check.

3. Gas - Duplicate weight calculation in `depositAsWeighted()`

The base weight for a deposit is calculated twice in depositAsWeighted().

Technical Details

The weight for the deposit (half the amount) is first calculated in line 167, and then re-calculated in line 179 when incrementing globalGrowthRate.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

Use weight to increment globalGrowthRate.

-   globalGrowthRate += uint112(_amount >> 1);
+   globalGrowthRate += uint112(weight);

Developer Response

Removed the double calc. Seems safe since weight doesn't change in lines above.

4. Gas - Account data is persisted twice to storage

Most functions persist the account data struct at the end of its implementation, which also happens when they first checkpoint.

Technical Details

In deposit (and all of its variants) and withdraw, the implementation first checkpoints the account, which saves the accountData struct to storage, while at the end of the implementation it updates the struct again to persist other potential changes that are part of the logic of each function.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

The internal _checkpointAccount() could avoid persisting the struct back to storage and delegate that responsibility to the caller.

Developer Response

Updated internal function not to write acctData to storage. Updated all callers of _checkpointAccount() to eventually write that value to storage.

5. Gas - Account checkpointing can be skipped if up to date

The implementation of _checkpointAccount() is executed even if the last update matches the current system week.

Technical Details

In _checkpointAccount(), the function checks that _systemWeek >= lastUpdateWeek, but still continues to execute all of its logic if these two values match. It can be seen that, if _systemWeek == lastUpdateWeek, then no changes will be made (none of the loops will execute).

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

The function could early return if lastUpdateWeek == systemWeek.

Developer Response

Added an early return.

6. Gas - Bitmap handling optimizations

Turning on a bit in the bitmap can be optimized by using a bitwise or operation.

Technical Details

The implementation of _deposit() checks that the pending weight is zero before incrementing acctData.updateWeeksBitmap to flip the right-most bit.

133:         if (previous == 0 && weight > 0) {
134:             // We flip the far right bit to indicate an update occurred in current week.
135:             acctData.updateWeeksBitmap += 1;
136:         }

This could be simplified, and improved in terms of security, by doing bitmap | 1.

Similarly, in depositAsWeighted(), the implementation checks that the associated bit is turned off before flipping it.

185:             uint8 mask = uint8(1 << _idx);
186:             uint8 bitmap = acctData.updateWeeksBitmap;
187:             // Only update storage bitmap if bit at target position needs to be flipped.
188:             if (bitmap & mask != mask && weight > 0) {
189:                 acctData.updateWeeksBitmap = bitmap ^ mask; // Flip single bit.
190:             }

This could also be simplified as bitmap | mask.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

For _deposit(),

-   if (previous == 0 && weight > 0) {
-       // We flip the far right bit to indicate an update occurred in current week.
-       acctData.updateWeeksBitmap += 1;
-   }
+   acctData.updateWeeksBitmap |= 1;

For depositAsWeighted(),

    uint8 mask = uint8(1 << _idx);
-   uint8 bitmap = acctData.updateWeeksBitmap;
-   // Only update storage bitmap if bit at target position needs to be flipped.
-   if (bitmap & mask != mask && weight > 0) {
-       acctData.updateWeeksBitmap = bitmap ^ mask; // Flip single bit.
-   }
+   acctData.updateWeeksBitmap |= mask;

Developer Response

Implemented suggested bitwise operator change.

7. Gas - Storage load reordering

Some storage loads can be reordered to potentially save gas by avoiding some SLOADs.

Technical Details

In getAccountWeightAt(), the weight is loaded in line 404, but the early return in line 406 doesn't depend on it.

404:         uint weight = accountWeeklyWeights[_account][lastUpdateWeek];
405:
406:         if (lastUpdateWeek >= _week) return accountWeeklyWeights[_account][_week];
407:         if (pending == 0) return weight;

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

Reorder storage loads to save gas.

Developer Response

Reordered as suggested.

8. Gas - Withdraw recalculates the original amount needed

In _withdraw(), the implementation modifies the amount of weight needed, only to recalculate it again.

Technical Details

The amountNeeded variable is first calculated in line 235, and then modified throughout the implementation to account for removed weight.

235:         uint amountNeeded = _amount >> 1;

To calculate the amount of pending weight that was removed (pendingRemoved), the implementation calculates again the original amount of needed weight to be removed.

268:         uint pendingRemoved = (_amount >> 1) - amountNeeded;

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

Instead of using amountNeeded to track the removed weight, copy this value to a new amountLeft variable and use this variable to track removed weight. Then pending can be calculated as pendingRemoved = amountNeeded - amountLeft.

Developer Response

Ignored. I agree with the assessment, but choosing not to change the implementation.

9. Gas - `_withdraw()` function can use AccountData return value to avoid additional account data SLOAD

_withdraw() function ignores the return data of _checkPointAccount() method.

Technical Details

_checkpointAccount() method returns updated account data, which means _withdraw() can use it instead of doing an SLOAD.

Impact

Gas savings.

Recommendation

    function _withdraw(address _account, uint _amount, address _receiver) internal returns (uint) {
        require(_amount > 1 && _amount < type(uint112).max, "invalid amount");
        uint systemWeek = getWeek();
        _checkpointAccount(_account, systemWeek);
       AccountData memory acctData = accountData[_account];

To avoid SLOAD for acctData.

Developer Response

Updated _withdraw() to remove extra SLOAD.

Informational Findings

1. Informational - `transferOwnership()` method is missing an event

Permissioned transferOwnership() method is missing an event.

Technical Details

Staker implements Ownable 2 step logic. But only one event gets emitted and only when ownership is accepted: OwnershipTransferred.

Impact

Informational.

Recommendation

Add emit OwnershipTransferStarted(owner(), newOwner); to indicate when ownership transfer started.

Developer Response

Chose not to implement.

2. Informational - Consider using custom errors

Replace require() statements with custom errors.

Technical Details

Given that the contracts have undergone extensive gas optimization, it seems reasonable to replace the require statements with custom errors.

Impact

Informational.

Recommendation

Consider using custom errors in place of require and string error messages.

Developer Response

Chose not to implement.

3. Informational - Consider using higher required amounts for deposit

Consider using higher required amounts for deposit, not 1 WEI.

Technical Details

In the deposit function, it is permitted to deposit a token amount of 1 wei, as indicated by the requirement require(_amount > 1 && _amount < type(uint112).max, "invalid amount");. However, it is unclear whether there is a practical use case for depositing such small amounts into the contract. While rounding errors are addressed, it might be wise to impose restrictions to prevent unintended interactions with the contract.

Impact

Informational.

Recommendation

Something like this can be used: require(_amount > 10 ** stakeToken.decimals() && _amount < type(uint112).max, "invalid amount");.

Developer Response

Chose not to implement.

4. Informational - `depositAsWeighted()` doesn't backfill weights for older weeks

When using depositAsWeighted(), weights are set for current system week and carried forward, but older periods are not backfilled.

Technical Details

The depositAsWeighted() function is a privileged action that allows whitelisted accounts to make deposits with a certain week maturity. As opposed to deposit(), the caller can specify a week _idx value that acts as a shift in the past, making the deposit look like it was deposited _idx weeks before the current system week.

The implementation adds the instantWeight, which is the boosted weight determined by _idx, to the current system week in the accountWeeklyWeights and globalWeeklyWeights mappings, and sets everything to carry the growth forward (unless _idx is at max growth which would just set the deposit as realized).

However, weights for previous weeks are not modified. A normal deposit would set weights accordingly for each period, setting 0.5x for the initial week, 1x for the next one, and so on. In contrast, deposits using depositAsWeighted() would miss weights for the period between systemWeek - _idx and systemWeek.

Impact

Informational.

Recommendation

Consumers of this contract may wrongly assume that depositAsWeighted() has the same effect as a deposit() in a past week. It is recommended to document this behavior, warning eventual integrations that depositAsWeighted() functions as a pre-boosted deposit that doesn't impact the weights of past weeks.

Developer Response

Added comment to function.

Final remarks

In our final assessment following the Yearn Finance team's response to our initial report, we revisited the protocol for a second review. Our findings indicate no severe issues, though we have identified some minor observations and opportunities for gas savings that could enhance the codebase. Notably, the complexity of the proposed staking solution, which diverges from typical designs in decentralized protocols, warranted additional scrutiny. This complexity stems from the requirement to efficiently manage weekly weights and boosts, leading to a range of optimizations and varied execution paths in critical functions such as deposit, withdrawal, and checkpointing. We conducted comprehensive testing, including edge case analysis and an invariant test suite comparing the results with a simplified re-implementation of the solution through state-fuzzing differential testing. These tests validated the robustness of the solution.

Following our review, the Yearn Finance team addressed the majority of the issues, further optimizing the code for gas efficiency without leading to any new findings.

yAudit YearnBoostedStaker Recheck Review

Table of Contents

Review Summary

Scope

Code Evaluation Matrix

Findings Explanation

Critical Findings

High Findings

Medium Findings

Low Findings

1. Low - MAX_STAKE_GROWTH_WEEKS can be set to 0 days

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

2. Low - stakeToken.transferFrom() in _deposit() method should be moved lower down by the call stack

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

Gas Saving Findings

1. Gas - Unnecessary check when updating an account's week bitmap

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

2. Gas - Incorrect optimization when loading previous weight in deposit

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

3. Gas - Duplicate weight calculation in depositAsWeighted()

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

4. Gas - Account data is persisted twice to storage

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

5. Gas - Account checkpointing can be skipped if up to date

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

6. Gas - Bitmap handling optimizations

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

7. Gas - Storage load reordering

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

8. Gas - Withdraw recalculates the original amount needed

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

9. Gas - _withdraw() function can use AccountData return value to avoid additional account data SLOAD

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

Informational Findings

1. Informational - transferOwnership() method is missing an event

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

2. Informational - Consider using custom errors

Technical Details

Impact

Recommendation

Developer Response

3. Informational - Consider using higher required amounts for deposit

Technical Details

Impact

2. Low - `stakeToken.transferFrom()` in `_deposit()` method should be moved lower down by the call stack

3. Gas - Duplicate weight calculation in `depositAsWeighted()`

9. Gas - `_withdraw()` function can use AccountData return value to avoid additional account data SLOAD

1. Informational - `transferOwnership()` method is missing an event

4. Informational - `depositAsWeighted()` doesn't backfill weights for older weeks

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