The unique financial characteristics of smart contracts that are widely nested on various blockchain platforms have now become one of the most successful applications of blockchain technology. Due to the high economic value of carrying a large number of assets and virtual currencies, smart contracts have also been constantly subjected to various security attacks. In addition, the characteristics of anonymity and automatic execution make smart contracts used in a variety of illegal transactions and malicious applications. Based on this, this paper firstly introduces the operation mechanism and principle of smart contracts with respect to blockchain-related technologies, and discusses the application scenarios and potential security issues in the development of smart contract technology. Finally, based on the summary of existing research work, we discuss the challenges faced in the field of smart contract vulnerability detection, and look at future research directions in conjunction with deep learning technology.