Table of contents

Call group

Call group is a proposed semantic for smart contract transactions, by grouping several calls together, and allows independent calls to interact with each other.

All things call group can do can be done by plain transactions, but call group makes smart contracts more natural and aligned with how real-world contract works.

Design

In both Ethereum and Substrate, smart contracts are invoked via transactions. A call structure describes a full invocation of a particular smart contract. For example, in Substrate, the call structure is as follows:

fn call(
  origin,
  dest: <T::Lookup as StaticLookup>::Source,
  #[compact] value: BalanceOf<T>,
  #[compact] gas_limit: Gas,
  data: Vec<u8>
);

In Ethereum, the current call sturcture is similar:

fn call(
  origin,
  dest: H160,
  value: U256,
  nonce: U256,
  gas_price: U256,
  gas_limit: U256,
  data: Vec<u8>,
);

In both cases, only one call is invoked at a time, and it is not possible for multiple calls to be dependent on each other, for example, to succeed and to fail at the same time. Call group extends current call structures we have to group multiple calls.

fn call(origin, dest, value, data, gas_limit, [nonce]);
fn transact(origin, calls: Vec<fn call>, [gas_price]);

Signature and fee payment

A call is signed by itself. Calls form call groups, which is in turn included in a transaction. The transaction is again signed. The gas fee payment happens to the signer of the transaction.

Call group dependency

Within a call group, calls can depend on other calls. Special EVM opcodes or Substrate WebAssembly externs are exposed to get the majority of call information. Note that to avoid the bad consequence of the infamous Hyrum’s Law, we do not expose gas limit information within a smart contract execution environment.

A call can retrieve other calls origin, destination, value and data information. If the condition does not hold, the call is expected to panic or emit out-of-gas error that fully revert all current call status.

A call can also declare that it needs a particular call within the call group to succeed. After the call group execution, if the required call failed, all state changes within the call group is reverted.

Substrate

This section describes a specification, with identifier 55-SCG. (Discuss)
This is a tentative specification, with possible details not yet specified. Join discussions to improve this.

Specification

Define the following Substrate contract externs:

  • cg_failall(): Fail the current call group, consumes all gases within the call group and revert all state changes.

  • cg_failif(index: u32): Fail the current call group if the call, as specified in the index, fails.

  • cg_len() → u32: Get the length of the current call group.

  • cg_value(index: u32) → Vec<u8>: Get the call, encoded in SCALE.

Define a new module call:

fn call_group(
  origin,
  values: Vec<CallItem>,
);

struct CallItem {
  origin: AccountId,
  dest: AccountId,
  value: BalanceOf<T>,
  gas_limit: Gas,
  data: Vec<u8>
  signature: Signature,
}

Ethereum

This section describes a specification, with identifier 56-ECG. (Discuss)
This is a tentative specification, with possible details not yet specified. Join discussions to improve this.

Specification

Define the following new opcodes:

  • CG_FAILALL: Fail the current call group, consumes all gases within the call group and revert all state changes.

  • CG_FAILIF [index]: Fail the current call group if the call, as specified in the index, fails.

  • CG_LEN: Push the length of the current call group to stack.

  • CG_VALUE_LEN [index]: Get length of the call, encoded in RLP format.

  • CG_VALUE_COPY [index] [mbase] [vbase] [len]: Copy the call, encoded in RLP format, to memory.

Define a new call group transaction format:

[ gasprice, [ [ nonce, gaslimit, to, value, data, v, r, s] ], v, r, s]