external-audit-engagement.md

External Audit Engagement

This note turns PrivateDAO's audit readiness into an actual handoff package for an external auditor or independent security reviewer.

It complements docs/audit-handoff.md by making the engagement deliverables and closure standard explicit.

Audit Objective

Review the exact mainnet candidate and answer three questions:

1. Are the governance and treasury invariants correctly enforced?
2. Are the Strict V2 additions backward-compatible and security-positive?
3. Are the remaining trust assumptions documented honestly enough for launch decisions?

Audit Scope

Priority paths:

• DAO creation and authority model
• proposal lifecycle: create, commit, reveal, finalize, execute
• veto and cancellation boundaries
• treasury execution for SOL and token flows
• confidential payout plans
• settlement evidence and consumption
• zk_enforced strict paths
• Realms voter-weight compatibility paths

Supporting scope:

• reviewer artifact generation
• runtime evidence generation
• launch blockers and custody handoff docs
• residual trust assumptions around MagicBlock and REFHE

Minimum Auditor Packet

• docs/audit-packet.generated.md
• docs/security-hardening-v2.md
• docs/security-review.md
• docs/threat-model.md
• docs/protocol-spec.md
• docs/mainnet-readiness.generated.md
• docs/mainnet-blockers.md
• docs/frontier-integrations.generated.md
• docs/launch-trust-packet.generated.md

Required Auditor Outputs

• final report or signed memo
• severity-ranked findings
• explicit statement of reviewed commit or release candidate
• explicit residual-risk statement
• confirmation of whether real-funds mainnet is acceptable, conditional, or not acceptable

Closure Standard

The audit blocker is not closed when the review starts. It is closed only when:

• the auditor names the exact reviewed commit or deployed candidate,
• every finding is marked fixed, accepted, or deferred with ownership,
• and the resulting disposition is stored in the release packet.

Repository Updates After Audit

Once the review exists, update:

• docs/mainnet-blockers.json
• docs/trust-package.md
• docs/launch-trust-packet.generated.json
• docs/launch-trust-packet.generated.md
• docs/mainnet-readiness.generated.md

Honest Boundary

The repository is ready to be audited.

It does not claim the external audit has already happened.