Prover Release Notes 

7.3.0 (April 11, 2024)

CVL 

[feat] An option to make autofinders for internal functions less likely to cause compilation failures, --use_memory_safe_autofinders
[feat] Dispatch-list summarization for calls with unresolved method identifiers
[feat] Preliminary support for tload, tstore operations in inline-assembly Solidity and EVM, along with ALL_TLOAD and ALL_TSTORE hooks, see Transient Storage and Hooking on all storage loads or stores
[feat] Support direct access to immutables, including private immutables
[feat] grounding of quantifiers supported with direct storage access expressions
[feat] Support asterisk (*) wildcard in --rule, and a new option for --exclude_rule, see --exclude_rule <rule_name_pattern>
[feat] Support using requireInvariant with unused invariants from imported contracts
[feat] Support blobhash instruction and opcode hooks
[bugfix] Fix --address setting of fixed addresses to contracts to reflect in counterexamples properly
[bugfix] Fixes to internal function detection
[bugfix] Fix issue when dealing with contract-types
[bugfix] Support multiple havoc-assuming statements inside a rule, hook, or function
[bugfix] Support unary minus in quantifier expressions
[bugfix] A helper option for detecting internal functions with Yul-optimizations enabled, --finder_friendly_optimizer
[bugfix] A collection of fixes to internal function detection and summarization
[bugfix] Support of summarization in old code using patterns like MakerDAO’s note modifier, enabled with --prover_args '-rewriteMSizeAllocations true' (the Global Warnings tab will advise when it’s recommended to be enabled)

Rule Report 

[feat] Improved presentation of arrays and arrays’ length in the call trace
[bugfix] Do not show rules as verified if the sanity check timed-out
[UX] Show internal functions that could not be detected (and as a result, summarized) in the global problems view
[UX] Avoid showing redundant and irrelevant analysis failures

Performance 

[bugfix] Better safe math optimization for multiplication by constants
[bugfix] Fixes to new parallel splitter mode

CLI 

[feat] --compilation_steps_only option is exposed (runs only compilation and type checking)
[feat] --precise_bitwise_ops to easily enable bit-vector theory solvers Mutation Testing

Mutation Testing 

[feat] Allow omitting the --conf flag to perform collection only
[bugfix] Fix root directory issue for mutated files in subdirectories
[bugfix] Rules that failed sanity during the run on the original code but capture mutants will not be ignored when computing caught mutants

Misc.

[feat] Preliminary support for running the Prover on .yul contracts
[bugfix] Assume strictly monotonic increasing free memory pointer, to avoid counterexamples due to overflow in memory access

7.0.7 (March 15, 2024)

CVL 

[feat] if conditions in CVL must be wrapped with parenthesis. Namely, if cond is illegal, use if (cond)
[feat] It is no longer needed to specify the STORAGE keyword for Sload and Sstore hooks. Please find-replace in your current specs!
[feat] The default summarization policy for wildcard external functions (e.g. _.foo(..) =>) is UNRESOLVED, meaning that the summary will only apply to calls to foo whose target contract is unknown. If you wish to apply to all call sites of foo, including for properly linked contracts, write _.foo(..) => some_summary ALL;
[feat] Allow ‘tuple like’ syntax for assignments, e.g. (x,y) = foo();
[feat] Support blobbasefee variable in environment variables
[feat] Auto-summarization mode for heuristically expensive internal functions
[feat] Support hooking on length of dynamic storage arrays
[feat] Support basic struct comparison
[bugfix] Wildcards properly constrained when assigned e.g. in summarization
[bugfix] Ensure cleanliness of CVL strings in the last word
[bugfix] Unlinked immutables are properly constrained to respect their types
[bugfix] Correct invariant handling of the base case rule for Vyper contracts
[bugfix] Fix to viewReentrancy builtin rule crash
[bugfix] Better type checking of quantified expressions with definitions
[bugfix] Fix direct storage access to an array of structs
[bugfix] Fix for internal summaries using user-defined value types

Rule Report 

[feat] Display array length in variables tab
[feat] Display array length in CVL to CVL function calls
[bugfix] No false match on Vyper constructors in invariants and parametric rules
[bugfix] Consistent rule ordering
[bugfix] Show message in report when --prover_args are incorrect

Static analysis and Performance 

[feat] Automatic full unrolling of copy loops (no need to set -copyLoopUnroll option)
[bugfix] Proper deduplication of libraries imported by different scene-level contracts
[bugfix] Fix returns of static arrays
[bugfix] make hashing of encodePacked bytes result deterministic when -enableCopyLoopRewrites is set to true
[bugfix] Source-based call resolution is disabled by default except for constructor methods. Can be re-enabled with --prover_args '-enableSolidityBasedInlining true'

Mutation Testing 

[feat] Instead of running with 2 conf files, one for the Prover and one for mutation, now the mutation settings are stored in the Prover conf under the key mutations
[feat] Relative paths to files to mutate are not relative to the mutation conf, but relative to current working directory
[feat] Nicer help message for certoraMutate
[bugfix] Minor mutation testing csv output
[bugfix] Default to optimistically running all mutants, not waiting for the original run
[bugfix] Improved error messages for manual mutations

CLI 

[feat] Instead of --prover_args '-optimisticFallback true' use --optimistic_fallback
[feat] Instead of --prover_args '-contractRecursionLimit N' use --contract_recursion_limit N, and a new flag --optimistic_contract_recursion
[feat] New option --compiler_map behaving exactly like --solc_map
[bugfix] Fix to --address when given without 0x prefix

6.3.1 (February 2, 2024)

CVL 

[feat] Casting addresses to bytes32
[feat] ECRecover builtin support
[feat] Optimistically assume the extcodesize is positive for calls that are summarized and with a non-HAVOC summary. This behavior can be disabled with --prover_args 'optimisticExtcodesize false'
[feat] Support direct storage access in quantifiers and axioms
[bugfix] Implication, bi-implication and ternary conditional operators are right-associative
[bugfix] Fully support additional environment fields. Namely, for env e, one can access e.block.basefee, e.block.coinbase, e.block.difficulty, e.block.gaslimit and e.tx.origin
[bugfix] Properly enforce bounds on enums accessed using direct storage access
[bugfix] Fix a bug with structs being passed to summaries and not preserving their fields’ values
[bugfix] Avoid hook inlining due to direct storage access
[bugfix] Type checker will error in presence of non-boolean expressions in quantifiers’ bodies
[UX] Emit a global error in rule report if 0 rules are provided in the spec
[UX] Cast assertions in CVL are treated like regular user-provided assertions
[UX] Warn about, and ignore, unused method arguments
[UX] Prevent calling library functions from CVL

Call Trace and Rule Report 

[feat] Add presentation of direct storage reads and direct storage havocs, including showing the updates in the Storage State
[feat] When the user provided no assertion message, show the assert condition
[bugfix] More refined handling of branch snippets within loop iterations
[bugfix] Ensure we get the correct TAC dump link
[UX] Improved messages for assertions in builtin rules
[UX] New presentation for invariants
[UX] Branch snippets are now flattened, can be made hierarchical using --prover_args '-flattenBranchesInCallTrace false'

Static analysis and Performance 

[feat] abi.encodeCall calls will be considered as copy-loops, thus will not require a higher --loop_iter if we enable the following option: --prover_args '-enableCopyLoopRewrites true'
[feat] Better performance on last assertions in a rule if --prover_args '-calltraceFreeOpt true' is enabled

Misc 

[feat] Support Vyper v0.3.10
[bugfix] Various bug fixes to improve stability of the Prover (crashes, static analysis, and SMT solving)
[bugfix] Better support of importing user-defined types from Solidity imports even if they are not given in a consistent fashion by solc

6.1.3 (January 11, 2024)

CVL 

[feat] Rules can now use both satisfy and assert statements together
[feat] An option for checking satisfy statements one-by-one instead of depending on previous satisfy-s, enabled with --independent_satisfy
[feat] Ghosts vs. persistent ghosts
[feat] support selector keyword in CALL-like hooks that can be compared to function selectors
[feat] New builtin function for hashing keccak256 in CVL
[feat] Support method parameter filters when invariants are imported with use
[feat] New options --optimistic_summary_recursion and --summary_recursion_limit.
[bugfix] improved error messages for hooks
[bugfix] Fix compile time checks for ghosts mappings axioms and bad CVL function calls therein
[bugfix] Make CONSTANT summaries of internal functions consistent
[bugfix] Allow Solidity struct fields named hook
[bugfix] Fix to_bytes in quantifiers
[bugfix] Better error message on struct decode failures
[bugfix] Proper typing of sub-expressions of bitwise shift operations within quantifiers
[UX] Nicer error messages for invalid use of max_* constants and hex literals
[UX] Sanity builtin rule now succeeds when the sanity check succeeds (using satisfy under the hood) (note this can swap the expected result if you use the builtin sanity rule often, but you no longer have to interpret a “violated” result as the good one)

Performance 

[feat] New optimization analysis. It can be configured to be more or less aggressive with the option --prover_args '-intervals_rewriter INT'
[feat] New flag for better performance: --prover_args '-enableCopyLoopRewrites true' - replaces copy loop code blocks with a single copy command. Decreases problem size and obviates loop unrolling for copy loops (i.e., more sound)
[feat] New flag for better performance: --prover_args '-enableAggressivePartitionPruning true' - for Solidity code that often manipulates - dynamic objects in memory

Call Trace 

[feat] Show branch source information (can be disabled with --prover_args '-enableConditionalSnippets false')
[bugfix] Fix return value display for ghost reads

Mutation Testing 

[feat] Generate mutation configuration automatically
[UX] Expose errors emitted by Gambit
[UX] certoraMutate now uses .mconf files instead of .conf

Misc 

[feat] enable the max constant loop unroll factor inferred with --prover_args '-loopUnrollBoundGuessUpperLimit INT
[bugfix] Vyper fixes for static arrays, xor patterns, ABI fetching in old versions
[bugfix] Support for some older versions of Vyper (0.3.7 and earlier)
[bugfix] Better decompilation for try/catch in a loop
[bugfix] Fix to false negative tautology check
[bugfix] Better retry mechanism for job-submission by certora-cli
[bugfix] Align with EVM by setting x/0 = 0
[bugfix] Fix storage analysis when Solidity optimizer is enabled
[bugfix] Fixes in handling solc’s --via-ir optimizer mode
[UX] Fix wait time in CLI to 2:30 hours, to account for possible long queue times in CI runs

5.0.5 (November 21, 2023)

Please find a list of the main changes in v5 here Certora CLI 5.0 Changes.

CVL 

[feat] Allowing calling Solidity functions from within CVL hooks
[feat] Direct storage access
[feat] Support for exhaustive parametric methods. Now method f calls will check for all methods in all contracts in Scene. The set of checked contracts can be limited with --parametric_contracts Contract1 Contract2
[bugfix] Disallow declaring method variables (aka method f; declarations) outside the top-level scope of a rule. They could still be declared as rule and CVL function arguments
[bugfix] Remove assume/assert notation from DELETE summary qualifiers
[bugfix] Disallow Solidity calls in CVL quantifier bodies
[bugfix] Support the ‘$’ sign in identifiers (specifically for Solidity functions)
[UX] When non-reverting calls lead to an ‘empty function’ because all paths revert, show an alert in the rule report

Performance 

[feat] New parallel splitter, can be enabled with --prover_args '-newSplitParallel true'
[feat] A new option for potential help with timeouts --prover_args '-calltraceFreeOpt true'
[feat] An option -relaxedPointerSemantics accepting a comma-separated list of contract:methodWithoutParamTypes pairs where the points-to analysis is allowed to be less strict
[feat] Better support for internal function summaries when --via-ir option is used, enabled with --function_finder_mode relaxed
[bugfix] Errors for an optimization we call “Memory partitioning” will now show up as alerts in the Global Problems view

Misc 

[feat] Solana call trace basic support
[feat] Mutation testing: Allow certoraMutate to run with a link to an original run
[feat] Allow to skip solc warnings we consider errors (undefined return values) with --contract_compiler_skip_severe_warning_as_error
[feat] --send_only is now the default mode except for CI users. Use --wait_for_results to force the old behavior
[bugfix] Fixes for: Vyper, loop unrolling, CVL, memory consumption, storage splitting
[bugfix] Remove support for native array theory in SMT
[bugfix] Mutation testing: only delete files created by the mutation tester
[UX] Old CLI format is now obsolete
[UX] CVL1 type checker is not run anymore for compatibility checks
[UX] --solc_args is deprecated

4.13.1 (September 26, 2023)

Minor improvements.

[feat] Present array length accesses in call trace
[bugfix] Report timeouts of sanity checks

4.12.1 (September 17, 2023)

CVL 

[bugfix] fix to bitwise operations
[bugfix] verify range of nativeBalances[addr] values
[bugfix] no duplication of multi-dimensional ghosts with axioms
[feat] delete summary qualifiers for faster preprocessing and dealing with analysis-breaking external functions. If a function is never called from spec, it will not be processed. In cases where it is externally called from Solidity, the summary will apply.
[feat] greater flexibility of internal summaries - allows accepting as arguments and returning certain reference types: primitive arrays, bytes, and structs which may (in nested structs too) contain primitive arrays
[feat] support multiple return values from CVL functions
[bugfix] Support keywords as struct fields and user defined type names
[bugfix] Fix to multi-assert mode when multiple CVL asserts in a rule share the same message
[UX] Skip rules where all methods are filtered out
[bugfix] Do not drop quantifiers when instrumenting vacuity checks
[UX] Improved error messages for preserved block errors
[bugfix] Support invariant preserved blocks for functions with an argument which is an array of structs
[feat] New keyword: executingContract available inside opcode hooks
[bugfix] Applying the CALL opcode hook even if the balance transfer fails
[bugfix] Support assigning to a wildcard variable
[bugfix] Fail if CVL function is non-void and does not end with a return statement

Performance 

[feat] Optimizations for safe math handling, in particular for solc versions 8.19 and up
[feat] Better performance of string and array types

Call Trace & Rule Report 

[feat] Show storage changed since the start
[feat] More frequent rule-report update
[bugfix] Rule running time to show time interval instead of sum of sub-rules intervals
[feat] Show state of ghosts together with contract state
[bugfix] Fix formatting of values of type bytesN and of storage locations

CLI 

[bugfix] link to CVL2 migration document fixed
[bugfix] support for other formats of protocol author in package.json files
[bugfix] fix error message when passing global timeout setting
[bugfix] less verbose prints in terminal
[UX] Validate rule names
[UX] Show number of splits solved per rule and their “weight”
[bugfix] Fixes to equivalence checker

Mutation Verification 

[bugfix] correct traversing of rules
[feat] improved csv output

Equivalence Checker 

[feat] Support void functions
[feat] Support compiler comparison
[bugfix] Making comparison more reliable in terms of initial state and with respect to low-level calls

4.10.1 (August 21, 2023)

CVL 

[feat] Support Solidity calls also from internal summaries
[feat] Allowing with(env) for summaries with(env e) clauses
[bugfix] lastStorage comparison fix for ghost maps
[bugfix] Bitwidth for bytesK variables is ensured, important for revert characteristic rules for methods accepting bytesK
[bugfix] Fixing structs encoding
[bugfix] Matching method summaries for methods accepting interfaces
[bugfix] Some improvements to how quantifiers calling Solidity functions are handled

Mutation Verification 

[feat] Output CSV files of the results
[bugfix] Manual mutations work and support for multiple manual mutations
[bugfix] certoraMutate working when running from project’s root

Timeouts and performance 

[feat] Show informative messages about cache hits
[bugfix] fix hashes of constant strings in constructors vs. in executable bytecode

Linking 

[bugfix] Fixing source-based heuristics linking to decrease chance for wrong matches
[bugfix] Fixes to sighash resolution
[bugfix] Correct revert handling in dispatched calls

Vyper 

[bugfix] Support for versions below 0.2.16 (from before storage layout output was introduced in Vyper)

4.8.0 (August 13, 2023)

New features and enhancements 

CVL 

Better expressivity: ALWAYS summaries can get bytesK arguments, e.g. ... => ALWAYS(to_bytesK(...))
Support for ALL_SLOAD and ALL_SSTORE hooks (see Hooking on all storage loads or stores)
Improved ABI encoding/decoding in CVL
More efficient handling of skipped rules
Allow calling Solidity functions from expression summaries

Call Trace and Rule Report 

Display havoced return values
Fixes to dump generation
Improved timeout visualization in TAC dumps
Fixes to presentation of quantified formulas in Call Trace
Better presentation of timeouts
Rule report will contain warnings about unused summaries
Display native balances
More friendly text for dispatcher-based resolutions
Improved ghost presentation

Performance 

Rule cache is enabled
Reducing number of iterations of static analyses
Improved decompiler performance

Mutation Verifier 

Manual mutants now supported in certoraMutate

Equivalence Checker 

Support for Vyper for the equivalence checker (certoraEqCheck utility)

CLI 

Allowing more Solidity file names
More compact zip input to cloud
Users can reduce the global timeout below 2 hours using --global_timeout <seconds>

Bug fixes 

CVL 

More graceful handling of bit-vector mode so that it emits less errors. It should be noted that numbers are forced to the 256-bit range and thus it is not recommended to use bit-vector mode.
Declaration of wildcard (i.e. _) variable names in rules or rule arguments is disallowed
Internal summaries - disallow NONDET summary on functions returning a pointer, as well as HAVOC or HAVOC_ECF summaries
Better checks on ghost axioms, especially if they refer to definitions
Fixing array literal assignments
Forbid assignments to array elements, i.e. uint[] a; a[0] = x; is disallowed
Internal summarization did not work in certain tricky cases involving loops and external calls
Fixing “Certora Prover Internal Error” sometimes appearing when reasoning on complex-typed arrays
Fixes for structs with contract types as fields

Call Trace 

Fix call trace generation issues for forall expressions

Mutation Verifier 

Correctly dealing with original runs where rules were originally violated

Misc.

Static analyses bug fixes
Fixes to read-only reentrancy rule
Avoiding an exception when -dontStopAtFirstSplitTimeout completes with all splits timing out

Other improvements 

Better parallelism and utilization
Timeout cores and more difficulty traces and hints to study timeout causes
Support for Solidity compiler version 0.8.20 and up

4.5.1 (July 15, 2023)

New features 

CVL 

Better expressivity: Allow binding the called contract in summaries using calledContract (see Function summaries)
Ease of use: Support reading and passing complex array and struct types in CVL. For example, you can write now:

env e;
uint v;
Test.MyComplexStruct x;
uint[] thingArray = x.nested[v].thing;
require thingArray.length == 3;
assert foo(e, x, v) == 3;

For the Solidity snippet of a contract Test:

struct MyComplexStruct {
    MyInnerStruct[] nested;
}

struct MyInnerStruct {
    uint[] thing;
    uint field;
}

function foo(MyComplexStruct memory z, uint x) external returns (uint) {
    return z.nested[x].thing.length;
}

Ease of use: Support access for storage variables whose type is either a primitive, a user defined value, or an enum
Ease of use: Enum types can be cast to integer types in CVL using the usual assert_TYPE and require_TYPE operators (see Changes to integer types)
A built-in rule for read-only reentrancy vulnerabilities

Call Trace 

Better view of the storage state at storage assignments, storage restore points, and storage comparisons

Multi-contract handling 

Improvements to the call resolution fallback mechanism in case main analyses fail, allowing linking and summarizations despite the failures
Introducing summarizeExtLibraryCallsAsNonDetPreLinking Prover option for easier setup of library-heavy code. See Library-based systems

Mutation Verifier 

New and easier to use certoraMutate. See Using Gambit with the Prover

Bug fixes 

CVL 

Fix issue when CVL functions are invoked within ternary expressions
Fix evaluation of power expressions such as 2^256
Make sure CVL keywords can appear as struct fields and be accessible from CVL

Performance 

Performance optimizations for the contract preprocessing step
Performance improvements in Prover
Performance improvements in CVL type checker (allows for faster job submission)

UX 

Show primary contract under verification even when a job is queued but not yet started
envfree checks failures presented not just in rules section, but also in the problems view for highlighting
Make sure more files generated by certoraRun are stored in .certora_internal
Allow equivalence checker to have the same function name appear in two contracts

4.3.1 (July 2, 2023)

New features 

CVL 

New builtin rules: sanity and deepSanity
Support a new keyword in CVL: satisfy
User-defined types can appear in hook patterns
Support using currentContract in ghosts and quantified expressions
Support conversion of uintN to bytesK with casting Support for bytes1…bytes32
Support nativeBalances in CVL
Making access of user-defined-types (enums, structs, user-defined type values) in Solidity consistent, whether those types are declared in a contract or outside of a contract. Specifically, for a user-defined type that’s declared in a contract, the access to it in a spec file is DeclaringContract.TypeName. For top-level user-defined types (declared outside of any contract/library) the access is using the using contract UsingContract.TypeName.
Support for EVM opcode hooks

CallTrace 

Display CVL functions in Call Trace
CallTrace presenting skolemized variables for quantified expressions
Gather all setup labels in CallTrace to be under one label
Make CallTrace accept invocation of internal solidity functions from CVL

Summarization 

Early summarization of internal functions for improved performance and precision
“catch-all” summaries. For example, given a library L on which we wish to apply the same summary for all external methods in L, write function L._ external => NONDET

Performance 

More stable generation of formulas for more predictable, consistent running times of rules
Basic parallel splitting for improved running time of rule solving

Other improvements 

Change default to new certora-cli API
Check for an invalid rule name (given with --rule) locally, before sending a request to the server
Adapt CVL AST serialization to JSON to enable LSP for CVL2
Visualize unsolved splits in timeouts

Bug fixes 

Warn if CONST summary is applied to methods that return nothing
The type checker will fail if an internal method summary uses an inheriting contract name instead of the declaring contract name
Disallow shadowing of ghost variables
Support exists as a struct field in spec files
require_ and assert_ casts disallowed in ghost axioms
CallTrace bug fixes

4.0.5 (June 7, 2023) CVL 2 

Breaking changes 

Upgrade to CVL 2 (see Changes Introduced in CVL 2 and CVL2 Migration Guide)
Change the minimal python required version from 3.8.0 to 3.8.16

New features 

Comparing storage
Add support for Vyper
Support CONSTANT summaries for all non-dynamic return types
New built-in rules sanity and deepSanity
Added --protocol_name and --protocol_owner flags

Other improvements 

Performance improvements
Bug fixes and internal improvements
Improved error messages
Improved console output
Improved call resolution output