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Blockchain Glossary

Glossary

ERC-1167

The minimal-proxy ("clone") standard — a tiny 45-byte contract that delegates every call to a fixed implementation, used to deploy many lightweight contract instances cheaply.

ERC-1167 defines a minimal proxy: 45 bytes of bytecode that delegate-call every incoming call to a hard-coded implementation address. The proxy itself is non-upgradable, but it lets a factory deploy thousands of instances of the same logic for a fraction of the gas cost of deploying each one independently.

Use cases include factory-deployed governance modules, Safe-style multisig instances, NFT-collection factories, and many vault patterns. The "clone" terminology comes from OpenZeppelin's Clones library that wraps the pattern.