Shadow Arena
You built the protocol. Now audit a real fork of it. Find the vulnerabilities that auditors found in past security contests. Compete on the leaderboard. Learn what you missed.
Why This Exists
With so few public audit contests running at any given time, aspiring security researchers have almost nowhere to practice. Shadow audits (reviewing past contests on your own) are an option, but they lack motivation. No deadline, no scoring, no one to compete against.
The Shadow Arena solves both problems. You get real protocols from real contests, a time limit that creates urgency, automated scoring that validates your findings against the actual results, and a leaderboard to compete on. And because you just built the base protocol yourself, you already understand the codebase at a deep level.
How It Works
A fork you already know
Each Shadow Arena protocol is a fork of something you just built. If you completed the Uniswap V2 module, you get a real fork that went through a public security contest. You already know the base architecture. Now find what changed and what broke.
Time-limited challenge
You have 7 days from when you start. Review the code, identify vulnerabilities, submit your findings with severity and description. The timer creates real urgency, just like an actual audit contest.
Automated scoring
When time runs out (or you submit early), your findings are validated against the actual contest results using Krait. True positives earn points based on severity. False positives cost you points. No gaming the system.
Learn from the review
After scoring, you see what you found, what you missed, and why each finding matters. This is where the real learning happens. You understand how forks introduce vulnerabilities, how protocol modifications create attack surfaces, and what auditors look for.
Build it, then break it
This is what makes Zealynx Academy different from standalone audit practice platforms. You don't arrive at a random codebase cold. You built the base protocol yourself. You understand the Factory pattern, the swap math, the LP token logic. When you see a fork that changed the fee calculation or added a new function, you know exactly what to look for. That's the advantage of the connected path.