Policy Manager Quick Start

This guide walks you through the Policy Manager — the ACE component for attaching and configuring compliance policies on smart contracts. By the end you will have a policy-protected contract running on a supported network.

1. Prerequisites

• Solidity basics
• Must-read before proceeding: Signing & Ownership Model — understand how ACE manages keys, who owns what, and how the delegated trust model works

2. Account setup

Complete the Account Setup steps — organization creation, API key generation, and CRE Connect Wallet deployment — before proceeding.

3. Create a PolicyEngine

A PolicyEngine is the onchain contract that evaluates compliance rules on your smart contract. When you create a PolicyEngine, you also attach extractors — modules that decode transaction calldata so the PolicyEngine can evaluate policies against function arguments (sender, recipient, amount, etc.).

curl -X POST https://ace.api.chain.link/v1/policy-engines \
  -H "Authorization: Apikey <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "My Policy Engine",
    "description": "Policy engine for my ERC-20 token",
    "extractor_ids": [
      "d4b8cd51-7d5a-487a-9ba5-bb7236e3184c",
      "572201bb-170b-4fda-ab89-a65b5bbc594b",
      "245c24a9-6fdd-48e0-a418-725ed0b2056c",
      "89df90a8-7f93-4ce1-9752-c0568062ae41",
      "c360c6f1-1df5-43b3-bd53-ad7d4c0bba54"
    ],
    "onchain_policy_engines": [
      { "chain_selector": "16015286601757825753" },
      { "chain_selector": "3478487238524512106" },
      { "chain_selector": "14767482510784806043" },
      { "chain_selector": "16281711391670634445" },
      { "chain_selector": "10344971235874465080" }
    ]
  }'

curl -X POST https://ace.api.chain.link/v1/policy-engines \
  -H "Authorization: Apikey <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "My Policy Engine",
    "description": "Policy engine for my ERC-3643 token",
    "extractor_ids": [
      "d4b8cd51-7d5a-487a-9ba5-bb7236e3184c",
      "572201bb-170b-4fda-ab89-a65b5bbc594b",
      "f17bbe8b-8462-4dd7-8fb7-a4973dff04fc",
      "a6422540-76fb-46bc-90e2-16cc7b0aaa1e",
      "bd80dda1-fa6c-4028-a26e-a1802ae41ec7",
      "d9015eeb-3345-478f-b2f1-2194b6689078"
    ],
    "onchain_policy_engines": [
      { "chain_selector": "16015286601757825753" },
      { "chain_selector": "3478487238524512106" },
      { "chain_selector": "14767482510784806043" },
      { "chain_selector": "16281711391670634445" },
      { "chain_selector": "10344971235874465080" }
    ]
  }'

{
  "id": "28755f4d-81c4-4df8-b424-a65782704d89",
  "name": "My Policy Engine",
  "type": "standard",
  "chain_selectors": [
    "16015286601757825753",
    "3478487238524512106",
    "14767482510784806043",
    "16281711391670634445",
    "10344971235874465080"
  ],
  "onchain_policy_engines": [
    {
      "id": "a3f7c2e1-9b04-4d6a-8e5f-1c2d3e4f5a6b",
      "chain_selector": "16015286601757825753",
      "address": "0x1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345678",
      "status": "creation_pending"
    },
    {
      "id": "b4e8d3f2-0c15-4e7b-9f6a-2d3e4f5a6b7c",
      "chain_selector": "3478487238524512106",
      "address": "0xabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcd",
      "status": "creation_pending"
    }
    // ... one entry per chain
  ],
  "extractor_registrations": [],
  "created_at": 1775580000,
  "updated_at": 1775580000
}

Verify deployment

The PolicyEngine and its extractors start with "creation_pending" / "inactive" status while the onchain transactions are processed. Poll until everything is ready:

curl https://ace.api.chain.link/v1/policy-engines/<POLICY_ENGINE_ID> \
  -H "Authorization: Apikey <API_KEY>"

Check two things in the response:

1. PolicyEngine deployed — Every entry in onchain_policy_engines shows "status": "created".
2. Extractors active — Every entry in extractor_registrations[].onchain_extractor_registrations shows "status": "active".

In the Platform UI, confirm the engine status is Active and extractors appear in the engine settings page.

Save the PolicyEngine addresses

Copy the address value from each entry in onchain_policy_engines — or from the engine settings page in the UI — you need these addresses to deploy or upgrade your smart contract in the next step. Each chain has a different PolicyEngine contract address.

4. Integrate your contract

See Making Your Contract ACE-Compatible for a full overview of what your contract needs. In short:

• Inherit from PolicyProtected (or PolicyProtectedUpgradeable for upgradeable contracts)
• Add the runPolicy modifier to the functions you want to protect
• Pass the PolicyEngine address during deployment or initialization

Choose your path:

New contract

If you are building a new token or contract from scratch, ACE provides reference implementations you can use as a starting point:

• ERC-20 — see Building an ERC-20 Compliance Token for the full guide
• ERC-3643 — see Building an ERC-3643 Compliance Token for the full guide

Existing contract

If you have an already-deployed contract you want to add ACE compliance to, this involves modifying your implementation contract, testing, and executing a proxy upgrade. This is typically the longest step in the onboarding process.

• See Upgrading Existing Contracts for the step-by-step guide
• Non-upgradeable contracts require alternative approaches — contact your Chainlink representative for guidance

5. Register your contract as a target

After deploying your contract, register it as a target under your PolicyEngine. Provide the contract name, type, protected methods, and on-chain addresses for each chain where the contract is deployed.

curl -X POST https://ace.api.chain.link/v1/targets \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Apikey <API_KEY>" \
  -d '{
    "title": "My ERC-20 Token",
    "description": "Production ERC-20 token with compliance enforcement",
    "policy_engine_id": "<POLICY_ENGINE_ID>",
    "protected_methods": [
      "transfer(address,uint256)",
      "transferFrom(address,address,uint256)",
      #[any other methods you want to protect]
    ],
    "desired_default_allow": true,
    "metadata": {"contract_type": "ERC-20"},
    "onchain_targets": [
      {
        "chain_selector": "16015286601757825753",
        "address": "0xYourContractAddressOnSepolia"
      },
      {
        "chain_selector": "3478487238524512106",
        "address": "0xYourContractAddressOnArbitrumSepolia"
      },
      #[any other chains where your contract is deployed]
    ]
  }'

Include an entry in onchain_targets for every chain where you deployed the contract. Once registered, your target appears in the ACE Platform dashboard under your policy engine.

For a full description of all fields and options, see Managing Targets.

6. Post-setup checklist

Before creating policies, confirm that every component is in the expected state. You can verify each of these with a single API call.

7. Create and configure policies

From the UI or API, create policy instances and attach them to your contract's protected functions. See Managing Policies for creating and configuring policies, then Protecting Target Functions for attaching them to specific functions on your contracts.

8. Test it

Make a transaction against your protected contract, verify the policy enforces correctly, and check the results in the Reporting Manager.