Gas Audit Flags $2.9M Annual Waste in Gauntlet DeFi Protocol Contracts

A gas-efficiency audit of Gauntlet, a DeFi protocol managing roughly $1.64 billion in total value locked across Ethereum and multiple Layer 2 networks, found transaction costs running 15–30% above industry benchmarks. The review, conducted in September 2026, identified seven key inefficiency areas including redundant storage writes, unbounded loops, poor data packing, and repeated external calls inside loops. Beyond cost concerns, auditors flagged security risks such as out-of-gas denial-of-service attacks from unbounded loops, re-entrancy vulnerabilities in rebalancing functions, and potential accounting errors if unchecked arithmetic is later introduced. Implementing the recommended fixes is estimated to save approximately $2.1 million annually on Ethereum mainnet and a further $0.8 million across L2 deployments. The audit includes a threat model with mitigations to address both the gas inefficiencies and their associated security implications.