concepts

Smart contracts do not run automatically because every onchain state transition requires an external actor and gas. You must design explicit incentive paths so users or bots are rewarded for triggering functions like liquidations or settlements permissionlessly.

Design permissionless incentives by analyzing who must call each state transition and aligning rewards so the system functions without admin intervention. This involves mapping operator roles, validating trigger mechanisms, and ensuring gas costs are covered by protocol rewards like LP incentives.

Onchain randomness is deterministic and unsafe against manipulation. You must use safe randomness approaches, typically integrating external oracles, while accounting for oracle failure modes and delay patterns to prevent attackers from predicting outcomes.

Common oracle design mistakes include assuming immediate data availability, ignoring oracle failure modes, and lacking fallback state-machine logic. You must analyze oracle update incentives and implement remediation steps to handle stale or manipulated data securely.

Timers do not exist natively onchain, so smart contracts cannot schedule execution independently. You must replace timer assumptions with permissionless trigger mechanisms, incentivizing external actors to execute state transitions when time-based conditions are met.