Fix a swap problem

Why does the same aggregator keep asking me to approve?

Find out why a familiar aggregator requests approval again and distinguish legitimate scope changes from suspicious requests.

A repeat approval request can be legitimate when the previous cap was used up, the spender changed, or you switched account, token or chain. The aggregator’s brand name alone does not identify the permission.

Compare old and new scope

Look up the last successful approval and the current allowance. Match token contract, owner, spender and network. ERC-20 allowance semantics are specific to the token and owner-spender relationship.

A cap sized for one trade may leave insufficient permission for the next. A newly selected route can also use another spender. That is a reason to verify the new deployment against official information, not a reason to trust it automatically.

Separate approval from a permit request

A wallet may show an onchain token approval followed later by a signature-based authorization. Permit2’s documentation explains why a reusable token permission and a per-spender authorization can be distinct steps. Read the request type, amount and expiry rather than counting prompts.

If the same scope has ample confirmed allowance, stop and investigate the application state. A wrong selected account, stale connection or a different token contract with the same symbol may explain the loop.

Do not solve unexplained prompts by choosing unlimited permissions. First answer what changed. An application that repeatedly requests a new unknown spender, unusually broad cap or unrelated token access warrants closer inspection before you sign anything else.

Sources & verification (2)

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  1. ERC-20: Token Standard

    Allowance, spender, transferFrom, metadata and approval event semantics.

    https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20
  2. Permit2 Overview

    Token approval layer and distinction between SignatureTransfer and AllowanceTransfer.

    https://developers.uniswap.org/docs/protocols/permit2/overview

Continue reading

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