Puppy Raffle

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

Gas extensive duplicate check leads to Denial of Service

Title: Gas extensive duplicate check leads to Denial of Service
Impact: Medium — Protocol becomes unusable but funds are recoverable via refund().
Likelihood: High — Gas grows quadratically with each entry.
Reference Files: src/PuppyRaffle.sol:86-90

Description:

Description

The duplicate check uses a nested loop that compares every player against every other player on each enterRaffle() call. As the players array grows, gas costs increase quadratically. The vulnerable code:

for (uint256 i = 0; i < players.length - 1; i++)
for (uint256 j = i + 1; j < players.length; j++)
require(players[i] != players[j], "Duplicate player");

At approximately 100 players, the gas cost exceeds the block limit, making the function permanently uncallable.

Risk

Impact: Medium. No funds are stolen — users can still call refund() to recover their ETH. However, the raffle becomes permanently unusable for new entries and winner selection after ~100 participants.
Likelihood: High. Every new entry increases gas costs for all future entrants. The quadratic growth is inevitable.
First 100 players cost ~8M gas. The next 100 cost ~20M+ gas, exceeding the ~30M block gas limit.

Proof of Concept

Entering 100 players costs approximately 8M gas. Entering the next 100 players costs over 20M gas, exceeding the block limit. All subsequent enterRaffle() calls revert with out-of-gas errors. Users can still call refund() to recover their ETH individually.

Recommended Mitigation

Replace the nested loop with an O(1) mapping lookup:

mapping(address => bool) public hasEntered;
require(!hasEntered[newPlayers[i]], "Duplicate");
hasEntered[newPlayers[i]] = true;

Mapping lookups cost constant gas (~5,000) regardless of how many players exist, eliminating the quadratic growth entirely.

Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 4 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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