Contract Verification

The process of publishing the human-readable Solidity (or Vyper) source code of a deployed contract on a block explorer like Etherscan, along with the compiler settings used to produce the deployed bytecode. The explorer verifies that compiling the source with those settings produces the exact bytecode on-chain. Verification enables source-level inspection, calldata decoding, and accurate transaction simulations. An unverified contract holding meaningful value is a red flag — the operator either lost the source code (incompetence) or is choosing not to publish it (obfuscation). 'Verified' does not mean 'safe' — it just means the code is readable.