Engineering · Jan 20, 2026 · 7 min · Devon Okafor
What Founders Should Know Before Building Smart Contracts
Decide trust, upgrades, and testing before a line of Solidity is written.
Before building smart contracts, founders need three decisions: what must be trustless and what can stay custodial, whether contracts upgrade (and who holds the keys), and what test coverage the team commits to.
Define trust assumptions
Every admin role is a trust assumption. List them, minimize them, and timelock what remains.
Choose an upgrade policy
Immutable, timelocked proxy, or DAO-governed — each has a cost. Pick deliberately; “we will decide later” is itself a decision, usually the worst one.
Budget for two audits
One audit finds issues; the second verifies the fixes. Plan remediation time between them.
Related: Smart Contract Development · Morrow Finance