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Overview

Deposit Addresses allow users to bridge funds by sending tokens to a pre-computed address — no wallet connection, no calldata, and no approval transactions required. Under the hood, Relay uses counterfactual smart contracts to generate deterministic deposit addresses for each (orderId, depositor) pair. Funds sent to these addresses are swept into the Depository and attributed to the correct order and depositor. This is powered by two contracts: a DepositAddressFactory (deployed once per chain) and a DepositAddress (a stateless implementation contract that proxies delegate to).
For API integration details and usage examples, see the Deposit Addresses feature guide.

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How It Works

The flow has three phases: address computation, deposit, and sweep.

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Address Computation

Each deposit address is deterministically derived from the orderId and depositor using CREATE2 and EIP-1167 minimal proxy clones. The factory computes a salt as keccak256(orderId, depositor), so the address depends on the factory address, the implementation address, and that combined salt. This means the address can be computed before any contract is deployed there. This is what makes deposit addresses “counterfactual” — the address is valid and can receive funds even though no contract exists at that address yet.

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Deposit

The user sends ERC20 tokens or native ETH directly to the computed address. No calldata is needed — a simple transfer is sufficient. The funds sit at the address until the sweep is triggered.

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Sweep

Once funds arrive, the Relay backend calls sweep on the DepositAddressFactory. This atomically:
  1. Deploys an EIP-1167 minimal proxy at the pre-computed address (using CREATE2)
  2. Calls the proxy’s sweep function via delegatecall to the DepositAddress implementation
  3. Transfers all funds from the deposit address into the Depository, tagged with the correct orderId and depositor
If the proxy has already been deployed (e.g., from a previous deposit for the same (orderId, depositor) pair), the factory calls sweep directly on the existing proxy — no redeployment needed.

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Contracts

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DepositAddressFactory

The factory is deployed once per supported chain. It has two key functions:
  • computeDepositAddress(orderId, depositor) — Returns the deterministic address where a user should send funds for a given order and credited depositor. This is a view function that requires no gas.
  • sweep(orderId, depositor, tokens) — Deploys the proxy (if needed) and sweeps all specified tokens to the Depository. The tokens array supports sweeping multiple token types in a single transaction.
The factory holds two immutable references:
  • DEPOSITORY — The Depository contract on that chain
  • IMPLEMENTATION — The DepositAddress implementation contract

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DepositAddress

The DepositAddress is a stateless implementation contract. It is never called directly — instead, EIP-1167 minimal proxies delegate to it. When called via a proxy, it:
  1. Reads the token balance at the proxy address
  2. For ERC20 tokens: approves the Depository and calls depositErc20(depositor, token, amount, orderId)
  3. For native ETH: calls depositNative(depositor, orderId) with the ETH value
The DepositAddress includes a receive() function to handle edge cases where ETH is sent to the proxy via selfdestruct or block rewards, preventing griefing attacks that could block proxy deployment.

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Multi-Token Support

A single deposit address can receive multiple token types. The sweep function accepts an array of token addresses, sweeping each one to the Depository in a single transaction. The zero address (0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000) represents native ETH.

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Security

  • Deterministic and verifiable — Anyone can independently compute a deposit address from the orderId and depositor and verify it matches what the API returned
  • Atomic operations — sweep is atomic: if any part fails, the entire transaction reverts and funds remain safe at the deposit address
  • No approval risk — Users send funds via simple transfers. No token approvals are granted to third parties
  • Non-upgradable — Both the factory and DepositAddress are immutable contracts
  • Re-sweep safe — If additional funds are sent to an address after the initial sweep, they can be recovered by calling sweep again

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Source Code

The DepositAddressFactory and DepositAddress contracts are part of the settlement-protocol repository.