In June EIP-3074 – one of the candidates for activation under the Shanghai hard fork – passed a security audit. Mika Honkasalo, an analyst at The Block Research, spoke about how the proposal will affect the user experience of network participants and what problems may arise.
The EIP-3074 has two main objectives:
further development of the concept of sponsored transactions;
improving user experience when using a regular Ethereum account (address from a public / private key pair).
Sponsored transactions allow you to separate the account from which gas is paid from and the account that actually performs operations with ERC-20 tokens. For example, DEX can include the cost of gas in the trading commission by paying for it on behalf of the user. Thanks to this, the latter has the ability to refuse to own ETH if he does not use it.
Previously, similar solutions were offered by the Consortium Center, the POA Network project and other community members behind the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin issue. However, in their case, the opportunity is realized through the mechanism of metatransactions, which are performed outside the Ethereum blockchain and are not implemented at the system level.
According to Honkasalo, this approach has two significant drawbacks. First, there is an element of centralization – if desired, the relay can censor the transaction.
Secondly, a specific smart contract must initially be developed taking into account this possibility, which creates additional overhead costs. If the contract does not support metatransactions, users will not be able to use them.
EIP-3074 defines two new opcodes for Ethereum:
AUTH – indicates the address that can send a transaction on behalf of the user;
AUTHCALL – calls smart contracts at the specified address on behalf of the user.
Данные: The Block Research, MyCrypto.
These operations are implemented within the framework of special invoker contracts, which are responsible for the functions usually performed by the Ethereum protocol. They also allow multiple transactions to be combined into a single package, which saves gas.
According to Honkasalo, the downside to EIP-3074 is the fact that the calling contract has full access to users’ funds and cannot be disabled. He noted that a “white list” of the most frequently used contracts is likely to be formed to address this issue.
The analyst also believes that EIP-3074 may negatively affect the value of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization. According to him, from the point of view of validators and users, the price of an asset is directly related to the degree of its use, and the integration of calling contracts will reduce the indicator.
According to The Block Research, the Shanghai hard fork is slated to activate in October 2021. The second candidate for inclusion in the update is the EIP-3540 proposal aimed at upgrading EVM.
On July 6, developer Tim Beiko initiated a proposal to activate the London hard fork on the Ethereum mainnet at block # 12965000, expected on August 4.
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