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Contracts

Contracts wrap smart contracts for Fetch.ai and third-party decentralized ledgers. In particular, they provide wrappers around the API or ABI of a smart contract and its byte code. They implement a translation between framework messages (in the valory/contract_api:1.0.0 protocol) and the implementation specifics of the ABI.

Contracts usually implement four types of methods:

  • a method to create a smart contract deployment transaction,
  • methods to create transactions to modify state in the deployed smart contract,
  • methods to create contract calls to execute static methods on the deployed smart contract, and
  • methods to query the state of the deployed smart contract.

Contracts can be added as packages which means they become reusable across AEA projects.

The smart contract wrapped in a AEA contract package might be a third-party smart contract or your own smart contract potentially interacting with a third-party contract on-chain.

Interacting with contracts from skills

Interacting with contracts in almost all cases requires network access. Therefore, the framework executes contract related logic in a Connection.

Message flow for contract and ledger interactions

In particular, the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection can be used to execute contract related logic. The skills communicate with the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection via the valory/contract_api:1.0.0 protocol. This protocol implements a request-response pattern to serve the four types of methods listed above:

  • the get_deploy_transaction message is used to request a deploy transaction for a specific contract. For instance, to request a deploy transaction for the deployment of the smart contract wrapped in the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 package, we send the following message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0:
contract_api_msg = ContractApiMessage(
    performative=ContractApiMessage.Performative.GET_DEPLOY_TRANSACTION,
    dialogue_reference=contract_api_dialogues.new_self_initiated_dialogue_reference(),
    ledger_id=strategy.ledger_id,
    contract_id="fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0",
    callable="get_deploy_transaction",
    kwargs=ContractApiMessage.Kwargs(
        {"deployer_address": self.context.agent_address}
    ),
)

Any additional arguments needed by the contract's constructor method should be added to kwargs.

This message will be handled by the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection and then a raw_transaction message will be returned with the matching raw transaction. To send this transaction to the ledger for processing, we first sign the message with the decision maker and then send the signed transaction to the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection using the valory/ledger_api:1.0.0 protocol. For details on how to implement the message handling, see the handlers in the erc1155_deploy skill.

CosmWasm based smart contract deployments

When using CosmWasm based smart contracts two types of deployment transactions exist. The first transaction stores the code on the chain. The second transaction initialises the code. This way, the same contract code can be initialised many times.
Both the store and init messages use the ContractApiMessage.Performative.GET_DEPLOY_TRANSACTION performative. The ledger API automatically detects the type of transactions based on the provided keyword arguments. In particular, an init transaction requires the keyword arguments code_id (integer), label (string), amount (integer) and init_msg (JSON).
For an example look at the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 package.

  • the get_raw_transaction message is used to request any transaction for a specific contract which changes state in the contract. For instance, to request a transaction for the creation of token in the deployed erc1155 smart contract wrapped in the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 package, we send the following message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0:
contract_api_msg = ContractApiMessage(
    performative=ContractApiMessage.Performative.GET_RAW_TRANSACTION,
    dialogue_reference=contract_api_dialogues.new_self_initiated_dialogue_reference(),
    ledger_id=strategy.ledger_id,
    contract_id="fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0",
    contract_address=strategy.contract_address,
    callable="get_create_batch_transaction",
    kwargs=ContractApiMessage.Kwargs(
        {
            "deployer_address": self.context.agent_address,
            "token_ids": strategy.token_ids,
        }
    ),
)

This message will be handled by the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection and then a raw_transaction message will be returned with the matching raw transaction. For this to be executed correctly, the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 contract package needs to implement the get_create_batch_transaction method with the specified key word arguments (see example in Deploy your own, below). Similarly to above, to send this transaction to the ledger for processing, we first sign the message with the decision maker and then send the signed transaction to the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection using the valory/ledger_api:1.0.0 protocol.

  • the get_raw_message message is used to request any contract method call for a specific contract which does not change state in the contract. For instance, to request a call to get a hash from some input data in the deployed erc1155 smart contract wrapped in the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 package, we send the following message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0:

contract_api_msg = ContractApiMessage(
    performative=ContractApiMessage.Performative.GET_RAW_MESSAGE,
    dialogue_reference=contract_api_dialogues.new_self_initiated_dialogue_reference(),
    ledger_id=strategy.ledger_id,
    contract_id="fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0",
    contract_address=strategy.contract_address,
    callable="get_hash_single",
    kwargs=ContractApiMessage.Kwargs(
        {
            "from_address": from_address,
            "to_address": to_address,
            "token_id": token_id,
            "from_supply": from_supply,
            "to_supply": to_supply,
            "value": value,
            "trade_nonce": trade_nonce,
        }
    ),
)
This message will be handled by the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection and then a raw_message message will be returned with the matching raw message. For this to be executed correctly, the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 contract package needs to implement the get_hash_single method with the specified key word arguments. We can then send the raw message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection using the valory/ledger_api:1.0.0 protocol. In this case, signing is not required.

  • the get_state message is used to request any contract method call to query state in the deployed contract. For instance, to request a call to get the balances in the deployed erc1155 smart contract wrapped in the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 package, we send the following message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0:

contract_api_msg = ContractApiMessage(
    performative=ContractApiMessage.Performative.GET_STATE,
    dialogue_reference=contract_api_dialogues.new_self_initiated_dialogue_reference(),
    ledger_id=strategy.ledger_id,
    contract_id="fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0",
    contract_address=strategy.contract_address,
    callable="get_balance",
    kwargs=ContractApiMessage.Kwargs(
        {"agent_address": address, "token_id": token_id}
    ),
)
This message will be handled by the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection and then a state message will be returned with the matching state. For this to be executed correctly, the fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0 contract package needs to implement the get_balance method with the specified key word arguments. We can then send the raw message to the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection using the valory/ledger_api:1.0.0 protocol. In this case, signing is not required.

Developing your own

The easiest way to get started developing your own contract is by using the scaffold command:

aea scaffold contract my_new_contract

This will scaffold a contract package called my_new_contract with three files:

  • __init__.py
  • contract.py, containing the scaffolded contract class
  • contract.yaml containing the scaffolded configuration file

Once your scaffold is in place, you can create a build folder in the package and copy the smart contract interface (e.g. bytes code and ABI) to it. Then, specify the path to the interfaces in the contract.yaml. For instance, if you use Ethereum, then you might specify the following:

contract_interface_paths:
    ethereum: build/my_contract.json
where ethereum is the ledger id and my_contract.json is the file containing the byte code and ABI.

Finally, you will want to implement the part of the contract interface you need in contract.py:

from aea.contracts.base import Contract
from aea.crypto.base import LedgerApi


class MyContract(Contract):
    """The MyContract contract class which acts as a bridge between AEA framework and ERC1155 ABI."""

    @classmethod
    def get_create_batch_transaction(
        cls,
        ledger_api: LedgerApi,
        contract_address: str,
        deployer_address: str,
        token_ids: List[int],
        data: Optional[bytes] = b"",
        gas: int = 300000,
    ) -> Dict[str, Any]:
        """
        Get the transaction to create a batch of tokens.

        :param ledger_api: the ledger API
        :param contract_address: the address of the contract
        :param deployer_address: the address of the deployer
        :param token_ids: the list of token ids for creation
        :param data: the data to include in the transaction
        :param gas: the gas to be used
        :return: the transaction object
        """
        # create the transaction dict
        nonce = ledger_api.api.eth.get_transaction_count(deployer_address)
        instance = cls.get_instance(ledger_api, contract_address)
        tx = instance.functions.createBatch(
            deployer_address, token_ids
        ).build_transaction(
            {
                "gas": gas,
                "gasPrice": ledger_api.api.to_wei("50", "gwei"),
                "nonce": nonce,
            }
        )
        tx = cls._try_estimate_gas(ledger_api, tx)
        return tx
Above, we implement a method to create a transaction, in this case a transaction to create a batch of tokens. The method will be called by the framework, specifically the valory/ledger:0.19.0 connection once it receives a message (see bullet point 2 above). The method first gets the latest transaction nonce of the deployer_address, then constructs the contract instance, then uses the instance to build the transaction and finally updates the gas on the transaction.

It helps to look at existing contract packages, like fetchai/erc1155:0.22.0, and skills using them, like fetchai/erc1155_client:0.11.0 and fetchai/erc1155_deploy:0.30.0, for inspiration and guidance.