Glossary
Proxy Contract
A thin contract that forwards calls to an implementation contract via delegatecall, letting the logic be swapped without changing the user-facing address.
Contracts are immutable once deployed, but most protocols still need to ship bug fixes and new features. The proxy pattern separates a thin contract that holds the state and the user-facing address (the "proxy") from the contract that contains the logic (the "implementation").
Governance can replace the implementation; users keep interacting with the same address. The risk is centralization: whoever can upgrade the implementation can also rug. Timelocks, multisig admins, and on-chain governance gate the upgrade key.