Admin Keys
Learn about our admin powers and limitations
The promise of DeFi
Pods “at scale” is possible in big part because of the underlying technology we have in the DeFi space. Transparency, composability, and decentralization are crucial factors for executing our mission of creating a much more accessible and innovative financial system.
Nascent technologies often come with short-term opportunities and costs associated with discovery and exploration. In DeFi’s case, exploration brings both wonders and risks. These should not be underestimated; neither by users, partners, team, or community members.
While creating incredible economic instruments, one needs to maintain a balance between permissionless innovation and risk analysis/mitigation.
Exploring the risks
Zooming in towards the lines of code, we observe various smart contract risks (bugs), risks of economic exploits, risks of hacks, risks of faulty logic in case of black swan events (usually not foreseen in simulations), and risks of funds theft.
Each one of these can be slightly mitigated, however, it is hardly impossible to make them all disappear. We’re doing what we can to fight against each risk and we urge users to understand that not only the Pods protocol but all DeFi protocols are built on extremely experimental technology and are subjected to failure (of all sorts), most likely without refunds.
This blog post aims to clarify one of the Safety Measures we’re taking as the core team. We’re also going to expand on why we did it and what you can expect from us as the next steps.
Admin Keys 🔑
The Pods core team currently holds admin keys to the protocol through the use of multi-sig wallets. We intend to decentralize the admin keys as the code proves itself to be economically and systematically stable in the future.
Below, we’ll explain in detail what are the current powers of the keys the team holds. The admin is capable of:
Increasing / Decreasing Cap
- The Option Instrument has a cap for the number of options (tokenA) users can mint on each live option series. Simultaneously, the Options AMM has a cap for the number of stablecoins (tokenB) that can be added as liquidity to the pool. The admin controller can decide the size of the cap at any time during the option’s life.
Change contract addresses of the peripherals contracts
- Our core contract OptionAMMPool is supplied with data from other sources. For example, spot price feeds Black Scholes to calculate the premium and the next sigma.
- Pricing Method, Oracles, and Implied Volatility contracts can be swapped if there’s a future iteration with improvements.
- The admin can change the address of those contracts but not the logic of the OptionAMMPool itself.
- Addresses are kept by the ConfigurationManager contract, which itself is secured by a multi-sig wallet.
Emergency Stop
- The Emergency Stop power describes the ability to pause and resume all the OptionAMMPool contract operations (add liquidity, trade, or remove liquidity).
An example of a situation where this could be helpful is in the case where our team or white hackers find a vulnerability, we are able to pause the system and get time to implement a solution.
Cap and Mainnet Release
Pods Protocol is going live on Ethereum mainnet and Polygon. There will always be test options available on Kovan or Mumbai.
Safety measures allow for an interactive launch of a full-featured product with limited liquidity. Therefore, the mainnet release will start with a tight cap as it attempts to increase users’ safety and limit the community’s losses in case of a bug, hack or exploit.
Caps are defined (and can be changed throughout the option’s lifetime) to control the maximum amount of options tokens minted and the maximum amount of stablecoins added as liquidity to the Options AMM. We plan to gradually increase the cap limit as the code proves itself to be economically and systematically stable.
Moving forward
Having admin powers under the control of the core team now appeared as a bigger benefit for the users’ safety than a potential loss due centralization. We’re looking forward to building Pods’ next versions with you and improve as we grow.
About Pods
Pods is a decentralized non-custodial options protocol. Users can create options and trade them through an Options AMM on the Ethereum Blockchain. Pods is the easiest way to hedge crypto in DeFi.
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