Call Permit

Detailed guide by Tanssi

The Call Permit Precompile on parodychain allows a user to sign a permit, an EIP-712 signed message, for any EVM call and it can be dispatched by anyone or any smart contract. It is similar to the Permit Signing of ERC-20 approvals introduced in EIP-2612, except it applies to any EVM call instead of only approvals.

When the call permit is dispatched, it is done so on behalf of the user who signed the permit and the user or contract that dispatches the permit is responsible for paying transaction fees. As such, the precompile can be used to perform gas-less transactions.

For example, Alice signs a call permit and Bob dispatches it and performs the call on behalf of Alice. Bob pays for the transaction fees and as such, Alice doesn't need to have any of the native currency to pay for the transaction, unless the call includes a transfer.

The Call Permit Precompile is located at the following address:

0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000802

Note

There can be some unintended consequences when using precompiles. Parodychain's Call Permit Precompile is derived from Moonbeam's, and as such, please familiarize yourself with Moonbeam's Precompile Security Considerations.

The Call Permit Solidity Interface

CallPermit.sol is a Solidity interface that allows developers to interact with the precompile's three methods.

CallPermit.sol

The interface includes the following functions:

dispatch(address from, address to, uint256 value, bytes data, uint64[] gaslimit, uint256 deadline, uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s) — dispatches a call on the behalf of another user with a EIP-712 permit. This function can be called by anyone or any smart contract. The transaction will revert if the permit is not valid or if the dispatched call reverts or errors (such as out of gas). If successful, the nonce of the signer is increased to prevent this permit to be replayed

Parameters

• from - the signer of the permit. The call will be dispatched on behalf of this address

• to - the address the call is made to

• value - the value being transferred from the from account

• data - the call data, or action to be executed

• value - the value being transferred from the from account

• gasLimit - the gas limit the dispatched call requires. Providing an argument for this parameter prevents the dispatcher from manipulating the gas limit

• deadline - the time in UNIX seconds after which the permit will no longer be valid. In JavaScript, you can get the current time in UNIX seconds by running console.log(Date.now()) in a JavaScript script or a browser console

• v - the recovery ID of the signature. The last one byte of the concatenated signature

• r - the first 32 bytes of the concatenated signature

• s - the second 32 bytes of the concatenated signature

nonces(address owner) — returns the current nonce for given owner

DOMAIN_SEPARATOR() — returns the EIP-712 domain separator which is used to avoid replay attacks. It follows the EIP-2612 implementation

The domain separator is defined in the EIP-712 standard and is calculated as:

keccak256(PERMIT_DOMAIN, name, version, chain_id, address)

The parameters of the hash can be broken down as follows:

• PERMIT_DOMAIN - is the keccak256 of EIP712Domain(string name,string version,uint256 chainId,address verifyingContract)

• name - is the name of the signing domain and must be 'Call Permit Precompile' exactly

• version - is the version of the signing domain. For this case version is set to 1

• chainId - is the chain ID of your appchain

• verifyingContract - is the address of the contract that will verify the signature. In this case, the Call Permit Precompile address

When dispatch is called, the permit needs to be verified before the call is dispatched. The first step is to compute the domain separator. The calculation can be seen in Moonbeam's implementation or you can check out a practical example in OpenZeppelin's EIP712 contract.

From there, a hash of the signature and the given arguments is generated which guarantees that the signature can only be used for the call permit. It uses a given nonce to ensure the signature is not subject to a replay attack. It is similar to OpenZeppelin's ERC20Permit contract, except the PERMIT_TYPEHASH is for a call permit, and the arguments match that of the dispatch function plus the nonce.

The domain separator and the hash struct can be used to build the final hash of the fully encoded message. A practical example is shown in OpenZeppelin's EIP712 contract.

With the final hash and the v, r, and s values, the signature can be verified and recovered. If successfully verified, the nonce will increase by one and the call will be dispatched.

Setup the Contracts

For this example, you'll learn how to sign a call permit that updates a message in a simple example contract, SetMessage.sol. Before you can generate the call permit signature, you'll need to deploy the contract and define the dispatch function arguments for the call permit.

Once you've set up the example contract, then you can set up the Call Permit Precompile contract.

Checking Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need to have your wallet configured to work with your EVM appchain and an account funded with native tokens. You can add your EVM appchain to MetaMask with one click on the Tanssi dApp. Or, you can configure MetaMask for Tanssi with the demo EVM appchain.

Example Contract

The SetMessage.sol contract is a perfect example to demonstrate use of the Call Permit Precompile.

// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
pragma solidity 0.8.7;

contract SetMessage {
    string storedMessage;

    function set(string calldata x) public {
        storedMessage = x;
    }

    function get() public view returns (string memory) {
        return storedMessage;
    }
}

Remix Set Up

You can use Remix to compile the example contract and deploy it. You'll need a copy of SetMessage.sol and CallPermit.sol. To add the contracts to Remix, you can take the following steps:

1. Click on the File explorer tab

2. Paste the CallPermit.sol contract into a Remix file named CallPermit.sol

3. Paste the SetMessage.sol contract into a Remix file named SetMessage.sol

Copying and pasting the example contract into Remix

Compile & Deploy the Example Contract

First, you'll need to compile the example contract:

1. Click on the Compile tab

2. Then to compile the interface, click on Compile SetMessage.sol

Compiling SetMessage.sol

Then you can deploy it:

1. Click on the Deploy and Run tab, directly below the Compile tab in Remix. Note: you are not deploying a contract here, instead you are accessing a precompiled contract that is already deployed

2. Make sure Injected Provider - Metamask is selected in the ENVIRONMENT drop down

3. Ensure SetMessage.sol is selected in the CONTRACT dropdown

4. Click Deploy

5. MetaMask will pop up and you'll need to Confirm the transaction

Provide the address

The contract will appear under the list of Deployed Contracts on the left side panel. Copy the contract address as you will need to use it to generate the call permit signature in the next section.

Compile & Access the Call Permit Precompile

First you'll need to compile the Call Permit Precompile contract:

1. Click on the Compile tab

2. Then to compile the interface, click on Compile CallPermit.sol

Compiling SetMessage.sol

Then, instead of deploying the contract, you'll just need to access it given the address of the precompile:

1. Click on the Deploy and Run tab, directly below the Compile tab in Remix. Note: you are not deploying a contract here, instead you are accessing a precompiled contract that is already deployed

2. Make sure Injected Provider - Metamask is selected in the ENVIRONMENT drop down

3. Ensure CallPermit.sol is selected in the CONTRACT dropdown. Since this is a precompiled contract, there is no deployment step. Rather you'll provide the address of the precompile in the At Address field

4. Provide the address of the Call Permit Precompile for Tanssi EVM appchains: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000802 and click At Address

5. The Call Permit Precompile will appear in the list of Deployed Contracts

Provide the address

Generate Call Permit Signature

In order to interact with the Call Permit Precompile, you have to have or generate a signature to dispatch the call permit. There are several ways you can generate the signature. This guide will show how to generate the signature using Ethers.js.

Here's an overview of the steps that you'll need to take to obtain the signature:

1. The message will be created and includes some of the data that is needed to create the call permit. It includes the arguments that will be passed into the dispatch function and the nonce of the signer

2. A JSON structure of the data the user needs to sign will be assembled for the call permit and include all of the types for the dispatch arguments and the nonce. This will result in the CallPermit type and will be saved as the primaryType

3. The domain separator will be created using "Call Permit Precompile" exactly for the name, the version of your dApp or platform, the chain ID of the network the signature is to be used on, and the address of the contract that will verify the signature. Note that you'll need to specify the chain ID of your appchain in the script to generate the correct signature

4. All of the assembled data will be signed using Ethers.js

5. The signature will be returned and you can use Ethers.js Signature.from method to return the v, r, and s values of the signature

The Call Permit Arguments

As seen in the Call Permit Interface section, the dispatch function takes the following parameters: from, to, value, data, gasLimit, deadline, v, r, and s.

In order to get the signature arguments (v, r, and s), you'll need to sign a message containing the arguments for the remainder of the aforementioned parameters, plus the nonce of the signer.

• from - the address of the account you want to sign the call permit with

• to - the contract address for the SetMessage.sol contract

• value - can be 0 for this example as you'll just be setting a message instead of transferring any funds

• data - you can send any message you would like. You'll just need the hex representation of the message you want to set using the SetMessage.sol contract. This will contain the function selector of the set function and the string of the message. For this example, you can send hello world. To do so, you can use this hex representation:

  0x4ed3885e0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000b68656c6c6f20776f726c64000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

• gasLimit - 100000 will be enough to send the dispatched call

• deadline - you can get the current time in UNIX seconds by running console.log(Date.now()) in a JavaScript script or a browser console. Once you have the current time, you should generously add additional seconds to represent when the call permit will expire

The nonce of the signer will also be needed. If this is your first time signing a call permit the nonce will be 0. You can also check the nonce in Remix:

1. Expand the call permit contract

2. Next to the nonces function, enter the address of the signer and click on nonces

3. The result will be returned directly under the function

Get the nonce

Use Ethers to Create the Signature

To generate the call permit signature using JavaScript and Ethers, you'll first need to create a project locally. You can do so with the following commands:

mkdir call-permit-example && cd call-permit-example && touch getSignature.js
npm init -y

You should now have a file where you can create the script to get the signature along with a package.json file. Open the package.json file, and below the "dependencies" section, add:

"type": "module"

Next, you can install Ethers.js:

npm i ethers

Remember

Never reveal your private keys, as they give direct access to your funds. The following steps are for demonstration purposes only.

In the getSignature.js file, you can copy and edit the following code snippet. In addition to the fields discussed above in the Call Permit arguments section, you'll need to insert the Chain ID of your appchain in the Domain Separator component to properly generate the signature. If you use an incorrect Chain ID, the generated signature will be invalid and no transaction can be dispatched.

getSignature.js

import { ethers } from 'ethers';

const from = 'INSERT_FROM_ADDRESS';
const to = 'INSERT_TO_ADDRESS';
const value = 0;
const data =
  '0x4ed3885e0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000b68656c6c6f20776f726c64000000000000000000000000000000000000000000';
const gaslimit = 100000;
const nonce = 'INSERT_SIGNERS_NONCE';
const deadline = 'INSERT_DEADLINE';

const createPermitMessageData = () => {
  const message = {
    from: from,
    to: to,
    value: value,
    data: data,
    gaslimit: gaslimit,
    nonce: nonce,
    deadline: deadline,
  };

  const typedData = {
    types: {
      CallPermit: [
        { name: 'from', type: 'address' },
        { name: 'to', type: 'address' },
        { name: 'value', type: 'uint256' },
        { name: 'data', type: 'bytes' },
        { name: 'gaslimit', type: 'uint64' },
        { name: 'nonce', type: 'uint256' },
        { name: 'deadline', type: 'uint256' },
      ],
    },
    primaryType: 'CallPermit',
    domain: {
      name: 'Call Permit Precompile',
      version: '1',
      chainId: INSERT-CHAIN-ID,
      verifyingContract: '0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000802',
    },
    message: message,
  };

  return {
    typedData,
    message,
  };
};

const messageData = createPermitMessageData();

// For demo purposes only. Never store your private key in a JavaScript/TypeScript file
const privateKey = 'INSERT_PRIVATE_KEY';
const wallet = new ethers.Wallet(privateKey);

const signature = await wallet.signTypedData(messageData.typedData.domain, messageData.typedData.types, messageData.message);

console.log(`Transaction successful with hash: ${signature}`);

const ethersSignature = ethers.Signature.from(signature);
const formattedSignature = {
  r: ethersSignature.r,
  s: ethersSignature.s,
  v: ethersSignature.v,
};

console.log(formattedSignature);

To run the script, use the following command:

node getSignature.js

In the console, you should see the concatenated signature along with the values for the signature including the v, r, and s values. Copy these values as you'll need them when interacting with the Call Permit Precompile in the following sections.

Signature values in the console

Note

Take care when copying the v, r, and s values to the dispatch method of the precompile. The ordering of v, r, and s values in the precompile may not be the same as output by the script.

Interact with the Solidity Interface

Now that you have generated the call permit signature, you will be able to test out calling the dispatch function of the Call Permit Precompile.

Dispatch a Call

When you send the dispatch function, you'll need the same arguments as you used to sign the call permit. To get started, go back to the Deploy and Run tab in Remix, and under the Deployed Contracts section, expand the call permit contract. Make sure that you're connected to the account that you want to consume the call permit and pay the transaction fees. Then take the following steps:

1. For the from field, enter the account address you used to sign the call permit with

2. Copy and paste the contract address of SetMessage.sol

3. Enter 0 for the value field

4. Enter the hex representation of the function selector for the set function and the string you want to set as the message for the SetMessage.sol contract. For this example, hello world can be used:

   0x4ed3885e0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000b68656c6c6f20776f726c64000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

5. Enter 100000 for the gasLimit field

6. Enter the deadline you used when signing the call permit

7. Copy the v value you should have retrieved while generating the call permit signature and paste it into the v field

8. Copy the r value you should have retrieved while generating the call permit signature and paste it into the r field

9. Copy the s value you should have retrieved while generating the call permit signature and paste it into the s field

10. Click transact to send the transaction

11. MetaMask should pop up and you can confirm the transaction

Dispatch the call permit

Once the transaction goes through, you can verify that the message was updated to hello world. To do so, you can:

1. Expand the SetMessage.sol contract

2. Click on get

3. The result will appear below the function, and it should show hello world

Verify the dispatch was executed as intended

Congratulations! You've successfully generated a call permit signature and used it to dispatch a call on behalf of the call permit signer.