I want to become a smart contract auditor, but I’m still not understanding DeFi properly — how did you all learn it in a practical way?

To become smart contract auditor I need to excel in defi

I went through the exact same phase. What helped me wasn’t reading more theory — it was tracing one protocol end to end. Uniswap V2 is the best starting point. Look at a simple swap: input amount comes in → reserves update → fee gets taken → output amount returns. Follow the variables inside the function and note what changed and why. You don’t have to understand every file, just the main movement.

Then recreate small scenarios. For example, simulate price changes or remove liquidity and check storage values before and after. That’s when you understand where tokens sit and why certain checks exist.

Also study a few attack write-ups. Most exploits aren’t “Solidity tricks”; they’re misunderstandings about how liquidity, prices, or collateral behave. Once you recognise these patterns, your intuition grows fast.

One protocol, one flow, repeat — that’s what finally made DeFi feel understandable to me.

For me, things clicked once I stopped trying to learn 10 protocols at once. I picked Compound and forced myself to understand only three things: how a borrow starts, how collateral is checked, and how liquidation is triggered. Once you understand those three flows, everything else in lending protocols becomes familiar.

The second thing that helped was mapping UI actions to contract calls. When you press “borrow” or “repay,” search for that function in the code and follow the next two internal calls. Suddenly the entire system feels clearer because you’re connecting real actions to actual state changes.

The third thing is discussions. Protocol forums, governance proposals, and design explainers taught me more than docs. Architects explain things in simple language there — why a parameter matters, why something breaks, why a change is risky. It’s underrated but extremely helpful.

One thing that helped me a lot was actually looking at failures instead of only studying “how things are supposed to work.” Not in a scary way — more like, “Okay, where did this protocol misjudge reality?” Pick one well-explained exploit each week and try to understand the moment things went off track. You’ll start noticing the same themes: a price feed that was trusted too easily, liquidity moving faster than expected, a timing gap nobody accounted for, or a user doing something the designers didn’t imagine.

When you go through an exploit, pause and ask yourself:

What value moved differently than the protocol expected?

Which check should’ve protected that path but didn’t?

What assumption was made that wouldn’t hold up in real usage?

Once you get comfortable spotting these patterns, reading protocol code becomes much easier. You stop scanning line by line and start thinking, “If I push here, what breaks?” That mindset builds DeFi intuition much faster than just reading docs.