Core Module

The Core module is very important for the system as it contains an entire state of the protocol and controls the mechanisms of the system while it is in an expected normal state of the operation. The key concepts and mechanisms as the Vat and Spot.

VAT is the core module vault and collateral state that keeps the Dai. The contract has no external dependencies and maintains the central “accounting invariants “ of Dai. Spot is the only non-authenticated function that takes 32 bytes of the ilk to be “poked” and these call for two external functions: peek and file.

-Potential sources of user error-Gotchas

The methods in the Vat are written as generic as they possibly could and have interfaces that can be quite confusing. Be advised that you have not mixed the order of parameters and any module that is authed against the Vat has full root access and can steal all of the collateral In the system which means that the addition of the new collateral type carries huge risks.

When the Cat is upgraded, there are plenty of references to it that have to be updated at the same time and it has to rely on the end which is the system’s pause.proxy. The methods in the spotter are basic compared to the other portions of dss. There’s no plenty of room for user error in the single unauthed method poke so if an incorrect bytes32 is supplied the call will fail. Any module that is authed against the spot has full root access and can add or remove the link can be poked while not completely breaking the system and causing considerable risks.

Failure modes

Vat- a bug in the Vat could be damaging and can lead to the loss of all Dai and Collateral in the system and it could become impossible to modify the Vault or to transfer Dai. Auctions could cease to operate and shutdown could fail. A bug in the spot could result in the prices for collaterals not being updated anymore and in this case, will need authorization a new spot which will then be able to update the prices. Overall this is not a catastrophic failure as this will only pause all price movements for a certain period of time.