Deprecated contract paused but pause reversible by live admin
A governance & admin factor in the v1.7.0 rubric. Measured per protocol on a s cadence.
Methodology how we score#
What this measures
This factor identifies whether a protocol has formally deprecated a contract but left the pause state on that contract reversible by a currently-live admin role. The deprecated contract is paused — appearing inactive — but the pause is not permanent: an admin can unpause it, restoring its functionality and any attack surface it carries. The factor is populated by on-chain checks of deprecated contracts listed in protocol documentation against their current pause state and who holds the unpause authority.
Why it matters
Deprecated but unfinalized contracts present an invisible attack surface. Users and monitoring systems may treat a paused deprecated contract as inert, but if a live admin role can unpause it, an attacker who compromises that admin can restore the contract's full functionality. OKX DEX lost $2.7M via a deprecated TokenApprove contract whose admin key had not been revoked — users still had open approvals to the contract, and a single admin action allowed the attacker to drain them. This pattern is distinct from a protocol that has burned or renounced admin on deprecated contracts, which would score green; the risk is specifically the combination of "announced deprecated" and "admin pause is still reversible."
Green / Yellow / Red
Green is assigned when deprecated contracts have had admin authority renounced or transferred to an immutable address, or when the pause is executed by a burned admin key with no live unpause capability. Yellow covers cases where a timelock of at least 48 hours gates any unpause action on deprecated contracts. Red is assigned when a deprecated contract's pause is reversible by a currently-live admin role with no timelock, effectively leaving the deprecated surface under live admin control.
Common gray cases
This factor is grayed when no contracts have been deprecated or when the deprecation status cannot be confirmed from public protocol documentation.
Notable historical examples
No cross-hacked incidents currently linked in database for this factor.
Measurement what to look for#
Determine whether a deprecated-and-paused contract's pause state is revertible by a currently-live admin role.