EIP-2474: Coinbase calls


  Ethereum Improvement Proposals
        
        
          
            
              
            
          
        

        AllCoreNetworkingInterfaceERCMetaInformational

      



      
        
  
    

  
    
      🚧 Stagnant
    
    
    
    
    
      Standards Track: Core
    
  
  
    
      EIP-2474: Coinbase calls
    
    
      
        
      
    
    
      
        
      
    
  

  

  	Authors	Ricardo Guilherme Schmidt (@3esmit)
	Created	2020-01-19
	Discussion Link	https://ethresear.ch/t/gas-abstraction-non-signed-block-validator-only-procedures/4388/2


  


  

  
    Table of Contents

    	Simple Summary
	Abstract
	Motivation
	Specification
	Rationale
	Backwards Compatibility
	Test Cases
	Implementation
	Security Considerations
	Copyright



  


  
      
      
         Simple Summary
      
      
    


Allow contracts to be called directly by block.coinbase (block validator), without a transaction.

  
    
      
      
         Abstract
      
      
    


In proof-of-work blockchains, validators are known as miners.


The validator might want to execute functions directly, without having to sign a transaction. Some examples might be presenting a proof in a contract for an change which also benefits the validator.


A notable example would be when a validator want to act as an EIP-1077 Gas Relayer, incentivized to pick up fees from meta transactions.
Without this change, they can do so by signing from any address a gasPrice = 0 transaction with the gas relayed call. 
However this brings an overhead of a signed transaction by validator that does nothing, as msg.sender is never used, and there is no gas cost to EVM charge.


This proposal makes possible to remove this unused ecrecover.

  
    
      
      
         Motivation
      
      
    


In order to reduce the overhead of calls that don’t use msg.sender and are being called by validator with tx.gasPrice = 0.

  
    
      
      
         Specification
      
      
    


The calls to be executed by block.coinbase would be included first at block, and would consume normally the gas of block, however they won’t pay/cost gas, instead the call logic would pay the validator in other form.


Would be valid to execute any calls without a transaction by the block coinbase, except when the validator call tries to read msg.sender, which would throw an invalid jump.


Calls included by the validator would have tx.origin = block.coinbase and gas.price = 0 for the rest of call stack, the rest follows as normal calls.

  
    
      
      
         Rationale
      
      
    


TBD

  
    
      
      
         Backwards Compatibility
      
      
    


tx.origin = block.coinbase could cause some issues on bad designed contracts, such as using tx.origin to validate a signature, an analysis on how contracts use tx.origin might be useful to decide if this is a good choice.

  
    
      
      
         Test Cases
      
      
    


TBD

  
    
      
      
         Implementation
      
      
    


TBD

  
    
      
      
         Security Considerations
      
      
    


TBD

  
    
      
      
         Copyright
      
      
    


Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.


  Citation

  Please cite this document as:

  
  Ricardo Guilherme Schmidt (@3esmit), "EIP-2474: Coinbase calls [DRAFT]," Ethereum Improvement Proposals, no. 2474, January 2020. [Online serial]. Available: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2474.






      
    
  

  

    Ethereum Improvement Proposals


    
      
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        Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) describe standards for the Ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.