NDSS 2025 Distinguished Paper Award: PropertyGPT Revolutionizes Smart Contract Security Through AI-Powered Formal Verification

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - The 32nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2025) has awarded its prestigious "Distinguished Paper Award" to "PropertyGPT: LLM-driven Formal Verification of Smart Contracts through Retrieval-Augmented Property Generation." This groundbreaking research, co-authored by MetaTrust Labs and AgentLayer researchers in collaboration with leading academic institutions, introduces an innovative approach to smart contract security that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate and enhance formal verification processes.

PropertyGPT addresses a critical gap in blockchain security by automating the creation of comprehensive verification properties—previously a manual, expert-driven process. The technology has been successfully implemented through AgentLayer's decentralized AI network, marking a significant advancement in how smart contracts are secured.

"PropertyGPT not only solves the efficiency bottleneck of traditional formal verification but also achieves scalable application through AgentLayer's distributed architecture," said Prof. Liu, Executive Director of Cybersecurity Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University and Co-founder of AgentLayer. "Our approach demonstrates that LLMs can dramatically improve the formal verification process, making it more accessible and comprehensive."

Technical Innovation and Impact

PropertyGPT harnesses the contextual learning capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs to transfer knowledge from existing human-written properties to generate customized security specifications for new smart contract code. The system employs several cutting-edge techniques:

●Retrieval-Augmented Generation technology, combining LLM's semantic understanding with historical vulnerability data retrieval through vector databases

●Compiler and static analysis feedback loops to iteratively improve property quality

●Multi-dimensional similarity evaluation for property ranking and selection

●A dedicated prover for formal verification of generated properties

In extensive testing, PropertyGPT achieved an impressive 80% recall rate compared to expert-generated properties. The system successfully detected 26 known vulnerabilities across 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 PropertyGPT into its self-developed AI Agents to optimize the automated verification process of smart contracts. Experiments demonstrate that the tool improves vulnerability detection efficiency for complex contracts by 40%, especially in DeFi and Web3 scenarios.

The NDSS review committee praised the achievement as "providing an implementable paradigm upgrade for smart contract security."

Strategic Collaboration

The partnership between MetaTrust Labs and AgentLayer represents a significant commitment to enhancing blockchain security through advanced AI technologies. Future plans include:

●Launching additional cutting-edge AI products that combine MetaTrust Labs' expertise in smart contract security with AgentLayer's innovation in AI technology

●Developing specialized AI Agents for blockchain applications

●Building a more robust decentralized AI ecosystem

About NDSS Symposium

The NDSS Symposium, hosted by the Internet Society for over 30 years, has grown into one of the world's leading security conferences. Originally the Workshop on Network and Distributed System Security, the symposium brings together hundreds of security educators, researchers, and practitioners from around the world to advance the state of practical security technologies.

About the Research Team

The collaborative team includes researchers from MetaTrust Labs, Singapore Management University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Nanyang Technological University: Prof. Liu (NTU/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 automated security scanning, smart contract auditing, and tools to simplify security management.MetaTrust Labs is shaping the future of secure Web3 infrastructure.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetatrustLabs

Website: https://metatrust.io/

About AgentLayer

AgentLayer is pioneering the future of decentralized AI with 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.

Website:https://agentlayer.xyz/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/Agent_Layer