Paxos just accidentally minted *$300 TRILLION PYUSD* on Ethereum mainnet. That’s absolutely wild. This shows how fragile stablecoin issuance operations can be, and why they need extremely tight controls. It’s not only about protecting against hacks, but also human or system-level fat-finger errors. Minting, burning, and supply reconciliation should always go through multiple layers of validation, both programmatic and human, before touching mainnet. No single system or operator should ever be able to mint an uncollateralized amount of this magnitude. Incidents like this highlight why regulated issuers must invest in proper mint controls, segregation of duties, and automated sanity checks. If the U.S. Treasury accidentally printed a few quadrillion dollars before reversing it, markets would go nuts. And that’s effectively what can happen on-chain, just faster and globally visible.
Wasim Memon
5d
The $300T minting glitch certainly highlights the importance of stronger controls, yet it also shows the other side of the story. The fact that it was identified, reversed, and contained within 22 minutes without any loss of funds suggests that some of the existing safeguards did work in practice. Perhaps the real lesson is not only that stablecoin systems can be fragile, but also that they are transparent and auditable in real time. Unlike traditional finance, where such errors can take months or years to surface, here they can be corrected almost immediately. The real challenge is ensuring prevention layers are as strong as the correction layers.
Edward T.
6d
This means they aren't even using multi-signature. Stablecoin Issuers need to have internal controls and security measures. But even with current solutions, you can't even implement basic security best practices. This is just foreshadowing unless dSIG is adopted as a standard.
Earl Gray
6d
Yeah I saw this - what is interesting is you wonder if this is illegal even if it was an error, will they be charged for illegally minting new dollar value? I don’t think they should, but what does that say about our future when simple math mistakes end up temporarioally 10x the supply of USD.
Laert Skreli
1w
Do we think somebody was in the wrong environment & accidentally pushed to prod? An error of this magnitude makes it seem like there were no controls in place. Just poof -> ship it.
Robert Alexă
6d
the fragility is even funnier (but the sad type of funny, not haha funny) when you think of hacks. MultiversX had a hacker a few months ago minting 150 QUADRILLION USDC (albeit non-native)
I suspect everyone keeps a close eye to ensure on-chain and off-chain reserves stay in sync 😉.
Anna Sarah Vladi
10h
zk proof of reserves would solve that, METL has it embeded in our infra, our mints would never allow this
It shows how error-prone centralized solutions are. By nature
Head of Solutions Architecture at Chainlink Labs
6dEvery stablecoin issuer should be integrating Chainlink Proof of Reserve directly into their minting function. It’s the most effective safeguard against unbacked token issuance and “infinite mint” risks. This mechanism already exists, and it’s battle-tested. https://x.com/ChainLinkGod/status/1978580815207715196