Proxy Contracts and Upgradeability Risks: Storage Collision Analysis and Testing Strategies

Immutable code has historically been a feature of blockchain development, not a bug. Once deployed to mainnet, a smart contract cannot be modified. This immutability guarantees that users interact with exactly what they audited, but it also creates a harsh reality: mistakes are permanent, and new functionality cannot be added. The proxy pattern emerged to solve this problem by decoupling logic from state, allowing developers to upgrade contract behavior without losing historical data or breaking