Compared to other available audit company right now, Certik is the most famous among all since I involve on many DeFi startup project.
That's all they are, the most popular ones, exactly the same as ICObench as they are the most popular ICO tracking/scoring site too. Being audited by Certik means squat, but is often used by scammy shitcoins as pitch, to appear more legit. And exactly the same thing as ICOs were using ICOBench back in 2017, bragging about the score on their websites to attract investors.
I have a friend that is working on a project, and they paid Certik shit load of money to find possible bugs in their code. Recently, they stumbled upon a major bug (luckily before hackers) in their smart contract that if exploited would completely rekt them, which Certik failed to identify. So yeah, you can pretty much ignore "audited by Certik" thing when you are DYOR on some altcoin.
This is very true. There is no trusted audit company in crypto market right now because most them is not regulated. They are offering a quick audit pass in exchange for payment so most shitcoin getting an approved audit from them. They are just focus on smart contract technicalities yet that doesn't mean the project was already safe to invest. This audit shit company are just giving away there approval to anyone with many that causes shit tons of rug pull.
@OP, crytopanic and playtoearn website is new to me. Thanks for sharing. Don't rely too much on Certik because they are paid dogs as well as other audit company like techrate.