Puppy Raffle

AI First Flight #1
Beginner FriendlyFoundrySolidityNFT
EXP
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Submission Details
Severity: medium
Valid

Unbounded player iteration causes quadratic gas growth and scalability issues.

Root + Impact

The players array does not have an upper bound limit whilst receiving and storing any given number of addresses sent, this grows gas quadratically.

Description

The enterRaffle() function accepts an arbitrary number of player addresses and performs nested iteration to detect duplicates:
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L86
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L87,
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L88
Because no upper bound is enforced on the number of participants, gas consumption grows quadratically as the player array increases.
Large participant batches may therefore become increasingly expensive to process and may eventually exceed practical block gas limits.
With an upper bound limit on the players array the function only handle a finite set of user informationn it can safely manipulate.
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L86
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L87,
https://github.com/CodeHawks-Contests/ai-puppy-raffle/blob/08e5b1fc6939b8da7792b2d13e43000c519d8897/src/PuppyRaffle.sol#L88

Risk

Likelihood:

Large amount of dataset in array would trigger quadratic gas consumption

Impact:

As raffle participation grows:

  • raffle entry transactions become increasingly expensive,

  • large batch submissions may revert due to gas limits,

  • and overall protocol scalability degrade

Proof of Concept

Recommended Mitigation

Consider:

  • enforcing a maximum batch size,

  • using mappings for duplicate detection,

  • or redesigning participant validation to avoid nested iteration.

for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++)- remove this code
uint256 private constant LIMIT = 25; + add this code
for (uint256 i = 0; i <= LIMIT; i++) + add this code
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 5 hours ago
Submission Judgement Published
Validated
Assigned finding tags:

[M-01] `PuppyRaffle: enterRaffle` Use of gas extensive duplicate check leads to Denial of Service, making subsequent participants to spend much more gas than prev ones to enter

## Description `enterRaffle` function uses gas inefficient duplicate check that causes leads to Denial of Service, making subsequent participants to spend much more gas than previous users to enter. ## Vulnerability Details In the `enterRaffle` function, to check duplicates, it loops through the `players` array. As the `player` array grows, it will make more checks, which leads the later user to pay more gas than the earlier one. More users in the Raffle, more checks a user have to make leads to pay more gas. ## Impact As the arrays grows significantly over time, it will make the function unusable due to block gas limit. This is not a fair approach and lead to bad user experience. ## POC In existing test suit, add this test to see the difference b/w gas for users. once added run `forge test --match-test testEnterRaffleIsGasInefficient -vvvvv` in terminal. you will be able to see logs in terminal. ```solidity function testEnterRaffleIsGasInefficient() public { vm.startPrank(owner); vm.txGasPrice(1); /// First we enter 100 participants uint256 firstBatch = 100; address[] memory firstBatchPlayers = new address[](firstBatch); for(uint256 i = 0; i < firstBatchPlayers; i++) { firstBatch[i] = address(i); } uint256 gasStart = gasleft(); puppyRaffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee * firstBatch}(firstBatchPlayers); uint256 gasEnd = gasleft(); uint256 gasUsedForFirstBatch = (gasStart - gasEnd) * txPrice; console.log("Gas cost of the first 100 partipants is:", gasUsedForFirstBatch); /// Now we enter 100 more participants uint256 secondBatch = 200; address[] memory secondBatchPlayers = new address[](secondBatch); for(uint256 i = 100; i < secondBatchPlayers; i++) { secondBatch[i] = address(i); } gasStart = gasleft(); puppyRaffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee * secondBatch}(secondBatchPlayers); gasEnd = gasleft(); uint256 gasUsedForSecondBatch = (gasStart - gasEnd) * txPrice; console.log("Gas cost of the next 100 participant is:", gasUsedForSecondBatch); vm.stopPrank(owner); } ``` ## Recommendations Here are some of recommendations, any one of that can be used to mitigate this risk. 1. User a mapping to check duplicates. For this approach you to declare a variable `uint256 raffleID`, that way each raffle will have unique id. Add a mapping from player address to raffle id to keep of users for particular round. ```diff + uint256 public raffleID; + mapping (address => uint256) public usersToRaffleId; . . function enterRaffle(address[] memory newPlayers) public payable { require(msg.value == entranceFee * newPlayers.length, "PuppyRaffle: Must send enough to enter raffle"); for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++) { players.push(newPlayers[i]); + usersToRaffleId[newPlayers[i]] = true; } // Check for duplicates + for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++){ + require(usersToRaffleId[i] != raffleID, "PuppyRaffle: Already a participant"); - for (uint256 i = 0; i < players.length - 1; i++) { - for (uint256 j = i + 1; j < players.length; j++) { - require(players[i] != players[j], "PuppyRaffle: Duplicate player"); - } } emit RaffleEnter(newPlayers); } . . . function selectWinner() external { //Existing code + raffleID = raffleID + 1; } ``` 2. Allow duplicates participants, As technically you can't stop people participants more than once. As players can use new address to enter. ```solidity function enterRaffle(address[] memory newPlayers) public payable { require(msg.value == entranceFee * newPlayers.length, "PuppyRaffle: Must send enough to enter raffle"); for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++) { players.push(newPlayers[i]); } emit RaffleEnter(newPlayers); } ```

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