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PAXOS TOKEN

Paxos-issued USD-collateralized ERC20 stablecoin public smart contract repository.

https://github.com/paxosglobal/paxos-token-contract

Roles

Role
DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE
PAUSE_ROLE
ASSET_PROTECTION_ROLE
SUPPLY_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_ROLE
SUPPLY_CONTROLLER_ROLE

To guard against centralized control, the addresses above utilize multisignature contracts (source). Any change requires the presence of a quorum of signers in the same physical location, ensuring that no individual signer can unilaterally influence a change.

ABI and Addresses

Contract ABIs can be found in the abis folder.

Interaction with token is done at the address of the proxy. Deployed token addresses can be found in the Paxos docs.

Contract Specification

Paxos Token is an ERC20 token that is Centrally Minted and Burned by Paxos, representing the trusted party backing the token with USD.

ERC20 Token

The public interface of PaxosToken is the ERC20 interface specified by EIP-20.

  • name()
  • symbol()
  • decimals()
  • totalSupply()
  • balanceOf(address who)
  • transfer(address to, uint256 value)
  • approve(address spender, uint256 value)
  • increaseApproval(address spender, uint256 addedValue)
  • decreaseApproval(address spender, uint256 subtractedValue)
  • allowance(address owner, address spender)
  • transferFrom(address from, address to, uint256 value)

And the usual events.

  • event Transfer(address indexed from, address indexed to, uint256 value)
  • event Approval(address indexed owner, address indexed spender, uint256 value)

Typical interaction with the contract will use transfer to move the token as payment. Additionally, a pattern involving approve and transferFrom can be used to allow another address to move tokens from your address to a third party without the need for the middleperson to custody the tokens, such as in the 0x protocol.

Warning about ERC20 approve front-running

There is a well known gotcha involving the ERC20 approve method. The problem occurs when the owner decides to change the allowance of a spender that already has an allowance. If the spender sends a transferFrom transaction at a similar time that the owner sends the new approve transaction and the transferFrom by the spender goes through first, then the spender gets to use the original allowance, and also get approved for the intended new allowance.

To mitigate this risk, we recommend that smart contract users utilize the alternative functions increaseApproval and decreaseApproval instead of using approve directly.

Controlling the token supply

PaxosToken uses a separately deployed SupplyControl contract to control the token supply. SupplyControl has a SUPPLY_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_ROLE which is responsible for managing addresses with the SUPPLY_CONTROLLER_ROLE, referred to as supplyControllers. Only supplyControllers can mint and burn tokens. SupplyControllers can optionally have rate limits to limit how many tokens can be minted over a given time frame.

SupplyControl also includes functions to get all of the supply controller addresses and get configuration for a specific supply controller.

Pausing the contract

In the event of a critical security threat, Paxos has the ability to pause transfers and approvals of the token. The ability to pause is controlled by a single owner role, following OpenZeppelin's Ownable. The simple model for pausing transfers following OpenZeppelin's Pausable.

While paused, the supply controller retains the ability to mint and burn tokens.

Asset Protection Role

The ASSET_PROTECTION_ROLE can freeze and unfreeze the token balance of any address on chain. It can also wipe the balance of an address after it is frozen to allow the appropriate authorities to seize the backing assets.

Freezing is something that Paxos will not do on its own accord, and as such we expect to happen extremely rarely. Checking if an address is frozen is possible via isFrozen(address who).

Delegate Transfer

To facilitate gas-less transactions, we have implemented EIP-3009 and EIP-2612.

EIP-3009

The public functions, transferWithAuthorization and transferWithAuthorizationBatch (for multiple transfers request), allows a spender(delegate) to transfer tokens on behalf of the sender, with condition that a signature, conforming to EIP-712, is provided by the respective sender.

function transferWithAuthorization(
   address from,
   address to,
   uint256 value,
   uint256 validAfter,
   uint256 validBefore,
   bytes32 nonce,
   uint8 v,
   bytes32 r,
   bytes32 s
) external;

function transferWithAuthorizationBatch(
   address[] memory from,
   address[] memory to,
   uint256[] memory value,
   uint256[] memory validAfter,
   uint256[] memory validBefore,
   bytes32[] memory nonce,
   uint8[] memory v,
   bytes32[] memory r,
   bytes32[] memory s
) external;

EIP-2612

The sender can establish an allowance for the spender using the permit function, which employs an EIP-712 signature for authorization. Subsequently, the spender can employ the transferFrom and transferFromBatch functions to initiate transfers on behalf of the sender.

function permit(
    address owner,
    address spender,
    uint value,
    uint deadline,
    uint8 v,
    bytes32 r,
    bytes32 s
) external;

function transferFrom(
    address _from,
    address _to,
    uint256 _value
) public returns (bool);

function transferFromBatch(
    address[] calldata _from,
    address[] calldata _to,
    uint256[] calldata _value
) public returns (bool);

Upgradeability Proxy

To facilitate upgradeability on the immutable blockchain we follow a standard two-contract delegation pattern: a proxy contract represents the token, while all calls not involving upgrading the contract are delegated to an implementation contract.

The delegation uses delegatecall, which runs the code of the implementation contract in the context of the proxy storage. This way the implementation pointer can be changed to a different implementation contract while still keeping the same data and contract address, which are really for the proxy contract.

USDP and PYUSD use AdminUpgradeabilityProxy from OpenZeppelin.

USDG and SupplyControl use UUPSUpgradeable from OpenZeppelin.

UUPSUpgradeable is a newer proxy pattern which has some advantages over AdminUpgradeabilityProxy. One issue with AdminUpgradeabilityProxy is the proxy admin cannot call any of the implementation functions which means the proxy admin must be a separate address from the DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE. This is not an issue with UUPSUpgradeable. Another advantage is updating the proxy admin in UUPSUpgradeable is a two step process due to using OpenZeppelin's AccessControlDefaultAdmin. However, in AdminUpgradeabilityProxy it's one step which is more dangerous.

Upgrade Process

The implementation contract is only used for the logic of the non-admin methods. A new implementation contract can be set by calling upgradeTo() or upgradeToAndCall() on the proxy, where the latter is used for upgrades requiring a new initialization or data migration so that it can all be done in one transaction. You must first deploy a copy of the new implementation contract, which is automatically paused by its constructor to help avoid accidental calls directly to the proxy contract.

Contract Tests

Install dependencies:

npm install

Compile the contracts:

npm run compile

Run unit tests:

npm run test

Check test coverage:

npm run coverage