Deploy-Day Checklist

What you'll learn

• Why Deploy-Day Has Its Own Checklist
• Pre-Deploy: Lock the Build
• Deploy: Reproducible and Verified
• Post-Deploy: Confirm Everything
• Monitoring and Incident Response
• The Mistakes That Have Cost Protocols Nine Figures

Key terms

Bytecode Verification

Confirming the bytecode at a deployed address byte-matches what your build produces. Catches build-config drift, wrong commit deployed, deploy-script bugs. Should be automated in every deploy.

Front-Run Initialization

Attack on upgradeable proxies: between deploy and initialize, anyone can call `initialize` and become admin. Prevented by atomic deploy-and-initialize (single transaction), which Foundry's Upgrades plugin does by default.

Timelock Controller

A contract that holds admin powers and enforces a delay (typically 24-48 hours) between proposing an action and executing it. Gives users time to exit if they don't trust the proposal. Standard for any non-trivial admin power.

Multisig (Gnosis Safe)

A contract that requires M-of-N signatures to execute any transaction. Standard custody for protocol admin keys. The threshold M is a trust-vs-availability trade-off — 3-of-5 is common.

Bug Bounty

A pre-arranged reward program for responsibly-disclosed vulnerabilities. Channels white-hat research toward you instead of toward black-market exploit buyers. Should exist before launch, not after the first incident.

Runbook

A written incident-response document. Specifies trigger conditions, decision-makers, communication channels, pause/unpause criteria, post-mortem templates. Written before incidents, not during.

Kill Conditions

Predefined automated triggers that cause an emergency pause. Examples: TVL drop >X% in an hour, single tx draining >Y% of treasury, oracle staleness >Z minutes. Better than human-paged reaction time.