I've spent my career doing third-party software security evaluations --- among other things, I founded the NCC Cryptography Services practice --- and I will tell you right now that the Wireguard security story is far more compelling than any third-party audit.

It's not simply the protocol design, which is superior in pretty much every conceivable way to IKE or TLS, but also the code, which is carefully written to minimize attack surface and increase reviewability.

Choosing OpenVPN or StrongSWAN over WireGuard to minimize exposure to vulnerabilities would be a dumb bet. Sometimes dumb bets pay off, but it's still dumb to make them.

I agree with you. It needs formal evaluation by pros with time to dig into it with review and tool-assisted analysis. That said, a person as experienced at pentesting as tptacek saying the crypto and code looked good puts its trustworthiness above most options in my eyes. I mean, you rarely here good things about both in such software. The quality of average development in crypto is just that bad. I also liked what I saw when I looked at it in terms of simplicity.

I only know Thomas via his output, but will say that based on it, he very much knows what he is talking about when it comes to the design and implementation of security protocols.