Executive Summary
A rapidly growing gaming-focused NFT marketplace engaged CredShields to optimize its minting and trading contracts. We delivered 40% gas savings, improved transaction performance by 2×, and resolved multiple hidden security flaws.
Background
The marketplace supported:
- High-volume mint events
- In-game asset trading
- Seasonal drops
- Royalties, metadata storage, and batch minting
As volume increased, performance bottlenecks and gas inefficiencies became more pronounced.
Users reported:
- Slow mints
- High transaction fees
- Occasional failed transactions
- Inconsistency between UI actions and on-chain executions
The Problem
Key Technical Issues Identified
- Excessive SSTORE operations
- Inefficient data packing
- Redundant logic inside mint functions
- Unoptimized signature verification
- Internal mapping reads not cached
- Missing checks around replay attacks
- Events missing validation fields
User Impact
High gas fees directly lowered retention and trading activity, critical for gaming ecosystems.
CredShields’ Approach
1. Opcode-Level Gas Profiling
Identified the heaviest execution paths.
2. Contract Refactoring
Removed redundant storage, merged operations, and introduced caching.
3. Optimization of Signature Verification
Ensured ECDSA checks were secure and gas-efficient.
4. Security Hardening
Fixed vulnerabilities around:
- Access control
- Replay risk
- Event integrity
- Role-based permissions
5. Benchmarking & Testing
Conducted A/B testing of gas usage across multiple block simulators.
Results
- 40% reduction in gas consumption during minting and trading
- 2× faster transaction execution
- Improved contract architecture for future upgrades
- Enhanced security posture
- Better UX for 50,000+ active users
Final Status: Optimized & Secured
Industry Lessons Learned
Legacy contract code becomes expensive very quickly at scale.
Gas optimization is a competitive advantage, especially in gaming.
Performance improvements directly increase marketplace liquidity.
Security and efficiency go hand in hand; inefficiencies often hide vulnerabilities.
Additional read
Rishabh