Networks and tokens

Contract address

Also called: Token contract

The address of a token's smart contract, its true identity; the name and symbol can be copied by anyone, the contract address can't.

Every token lives at a contract address on its network. That address, not the name or the logo, is what identifies the token. Scammers routinely deploy contracts called "USDT" or "USDC" and send them to people, hoping they'll be mistaken for the real thing.

Rules of thumb:

  • Store the contract address of every token you accept, per network.
  • Credit a deposit only if it came from that contract.
  • Remember that the same coin has a different contract on each network.

For example, USDT on Tron is TR7NHqjeKQxGTCi8q8ZY4pL8otSzgjLj6t, a different contract from USDT on Ethereum or BNB Chain.

On Valtu

Valtu counts only each network's real contract for each coin. Look-alike tokens sent to your customers' addresses are ignored rather than credited. Every contract Valtu accepts is listed on its coin page, for example USDT on Tron or USDC on Base, with a link to check it on an explorer.

Related terms

Keep reading.

Smart contractA program stored on a blockchain that runs exactly as written when called; tokens such as USDT and USDC are smart contracts that keep a ledger of balances. Address poisoningA scam that plants look-alike addresses or fake tokens in a wallet's history, hoping someone copies the wrong address or mistakes a worthless token for a real one. Token decimalsHow many decimal places a token uses; on-chain amounts are whole numbers of the smallest unit, so 1 USDT with 6 decimals is 1,000,000 units. Block explorerA website that shows a network's blocks, transactions, addresses and token contracts, the usual way to look up a transaction by its hash.

More in networks and tokens: Confirmations · Finality · Chain reorganization · Mempool · Testnet · EVM · Layer 2 · ERC-20 · TRC-20 · BEP-20 · Stablecoin · USDT · USDC · Wrapped token. The whole glossary.

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