Opening a 600-line Solidity contract you have never seen is intimidating. Where do you even start? Over time I developed a reading order that turns the wall of code into something I can reason about in an hour instead of a day. It is the same order whether I am auditing for vulnerabilities, integrating against the contract, or just trying to understand a protocol. Here it is.
Don't read top to bottom
The instinct is to read the file from line 1. That is the worst approach, because the important parts (who can do what, where money moves) are scattered and the top is usually imports and boilerplate. You burn your attention before you reach anything that matters.
Read in order of power, not order of appearance.
Step 1: find the money
