Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
blockchain auditing
cryptoasset
technical challenges
financial auditing
smart contracts
Auditing Blockchain Innovations: Technical Challenges Beyond Traditional Finance
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the technical auditing challenges posed by blockchain assets and custody mechanisms, which disrupt traditional financial audit paradigms—particularly concerning asset existence, ownership verification, valuation, and internal control validation. For the first time, autoethnography is introduced into blockchain auditing, drawing on the author’s multifaceted experience as a blockchain engineer, smart contract auditor, and CTO of a crypto-asset firm to uncover nuanced technical details inaccessible to external observers. Focusing on representative scenarios such as airdropped tokens, multi-signature smart contracts, and real-time on-chain reporting, the work constructs an audit analysis framework tailored to emerging on-chain practices and proposes reusable, experimental audit pathways that effectively tackle challenges currently deemed technically insurmountable.
📝 Abstract
Blockchain technology introduces asset types and custody mechanisms that fundamentally break traditional financial auditing paradigms. This paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of cryptoasset auditing challenges, build on top of prior research on a comprehensive framework addressing existence, ownership, valuation, and internal control verification. Drawing from lived experience implementing blockchain systems as an engineer, smart contract auditor, and CTO of a publicly traded cryptoasset firm, we demonstrate how autoethnographic methodology becomes necessary for understanding technical complexities that external analysis cannot capture. Through detailed examination of token airdrops, multi-signature smart contracts, and real-time on-chain reporting, we provide experimental approaches and common scenarios that auditing firms can analyze to address blockchain innovations currently considered technically insurmountable.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
autoethnography
blockchain auditing
cryptoasset custody
smart contract verification
on-chain reporting
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