San Diego, California - February 27, 2025 - The 32nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2025) has awarded its prestigious "Best Paper Award" to "PropertyGPT: LLM-Driven Formal Verification of Smart Contracts through Retrieval-Augmented Property Generation". This groundbreaking research, conducted by researchers from MetaTrust Labs and AgentLayer in collaboration with top academic institutions, introduces an innovative approach that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate and enhance the formal verification process.
PropertyGPT addresses a key gap in blockchain security by automating the creation of comprehensive verification properties, a previously manual and expert-driven process. The technology has been successfully deployed through AgentLayer's decentralized AI network, marking a significant advancement in smart contract security.
"PropertyGPT not only solves the efficiency bottleneck of traditional formal verification, but also achieves scalable deployment through AgentLayer's distributed architecture," said Professor Yang Liu, Executive Director of the Centre for Cybersecurity at Nanyang Technological University and Co-founder of AgentLayer. "Our approach demonstrates that LLMs can significantly improve the formal verification process, making it more accessible and comprehensive."
Technical Innovation and Impact
PropertyGPT leverages the contextual learning capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs to transfer the knowledge of manually written properties to generate customized security specifications for new smart contract code. The system employs a range of cutting-edge techniques:
- Retrieval-augmented generation, combining LLM's semantic understanding with historical vulnerability data retrieved from a vector database
- Compiler and static analysis feedback loop to iteratively improve property quality
- Multi-dimensional similarity assessment for property ranking and selection
- Dedicated provers to generate formal verification of the properties
In extensive testing, PropertyGPT achieved an impressive 80% recall rate compared to expert-generated properties. The system successfully detected 26 known vulnerabilities out of 37 test cases and discovered 12 previously unknown security flaws, earning $8,256 in bug bounty rewards.
AgentLayer Integration and Industry Impact
AgentLayer has integrated its proprietary AI Agents with PropertyGPT to optimize the automated verification process for smart contracts. Experiments have shown that the tool can improve the vulnerability detection efficiency of complex contracts by 40% in DeFi and Web3 scenarios.
The NDSS review committee praised this achievement as "providing a viable paradigm shift for smart contract security."
Strategic Collaboration
The partnership between MetaTrust Labs and AgentLayer represents a significant commitment to enhancing blockchain security through advanced AI technology. Future plans include:
- Launching more cutting-edge AI products that combine MetaTrust Labs' expertise in smart contract security and AgentLayer's innovations in AI technology
- Developing specialized AI Agents for blockchain applications
- Building a more robust decentralized AI ecosystem
About NDSS Symposium
Hosted by the Internet Society for over 30 years, the NDSS Symposium has evolved into one of the leading security conferences globally. Originally the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, the event brings together hundreds of security educators, researchers, and practitioners from around the world to advance the development of practical security technologies.
About the Research Team
The collaborative team includes researchers from MetaTrust Labs, AgentLayer, Singapore Management University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Nanyang Technological University: Ye Liu (SMU, AgentLayer), Yue Xue (MetaTrust Labs), Daoyuan Wu (HKUST, AgentLayer), Yuqiang Sun (NTU), Yi Li (NTU), Miaolei Shi (MetaTrust Labs), and Yang Liu (NTU, AgentLayer).
About MetaTrust Labs
MetaTrust Labs is a leading Web3 security platform that provides AI-driven solutions for blockchain developers. Born at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, it offers tools for automated security scanning, smart contract auditing, and simplified security management. MetaTrust Labs is shaping the future of secure Web3 infrastructure.
About AgentLayer
AgentLayer is pioneering the future of decentralized AI, launching the world's first blockchain network designed for autonomous AI Agents. By seamlessly integrating cutting-edge AI capabilities with blockchain technology, AgentLayer empowers developers and enterprises to build, deploy, and trade intelligent Agents at scale.
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