There is ongoing work in formal verification of both Rust and the unsafe code in the stdlib. However, the average writer of unsafe code will not use formal ver

There is ongoing work in formal verification of both Rust and the unsafe code in the stdlib. However, the average writer of unsafe code will not use formal verification. For them, the nomicon is a very useful resource. And describing it as a dark art is the best way to do it, because unsafe code can be hard and fraught with pitfalls.