Making flexible, secure, and low-cost contracts

In this guide, you will learn how the flexibility of Chainlink Automation enables important design patterns that reduce gas fees, enhance the resilience of dApps, and improve end-user experience. Smart contracts themselves cannot self-trigger their functions at arbitrary times or under arbitrary conditions. Transactions can only be initiated by another account.

Start by integrating an example contract to Chainlink Automation that has not yet been optimized. Then, deploy a comparison contract that shows you how to properly use the flexibility of Chainlink Automation to perform complex computations without paying high gas fees.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of Chainlink Automation. If you are new to Keepers, complete the following guides first:

Chainlink Automation is supported on several networks.

Problem: On-chain computation leads to high gas fees

In the guide for Creating Compatible Contracts, you deployed a basic counter contract and verified that the counter increments every 30 seconds. However, more complex use cases can require looping over arrays or performing expensive computation. This leads to expensive gas fees and can increase the premium that end-users have to pay to use your dApp. To illustrate this, deploy an example contract that maintains internal balances.

The contract has the following components:

  • A fixed-size(1000) array balances with each element of the array starting with a balance of 1000.
  • The withdraw() function decreases the balance of one or more indexes in the balances array. Use this to simulate changes to the balance of each element in the array.
  • Automation Nodes are responsible for regularly re-balancing the elements using two functions:
    • The checkUpkeep() function checks if the contract requires work to be done. If one array element has a balance of less than LIMIT, the function returns upkeepNeeded == true.
    • The performUpkeep() function to re-balances the elements. To demonstrate how this computation can cause high gas fees, this example does all of the computation within the transaction. The function finds all of the elements that are less than LIMIT, decreases the contract liquidity, and increases every found element to equal LIMIT.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.7;
import "@chainlink/contracts/src/v0.8/interfaces/AutomationCompatibleInterface.sol";

/**
 * @dev Example contract which perform all the computation in `performUpkeep`
 * @notice important to implement {AutomationCompatibleInterface}
 */

/**
 * THIS IS AN EXAMPLE CONTRACT THAT USES HARDCODED VALUES FOR CLARITY.
 * THIS IS AN EXAMPLE CONTRACT THAT USES UN-AUDITED CODE.
 * DO NOT USE THIS CODE IN PRODUCTION.
 */

contract BalancerOnChain is AutomationCompatibleInterface {
    uint256 public constant SIZE = 1000;
    uint256 public constant LIMIT = 1000;
    uint256[SIZE] public balances;
    uint256 public liquidity = 1000000;

    constructor() {
        // On the initialization of the contract, all the elements have a balance equal to the limit
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < SIZE; i++) {
            balances[i] = LIMIT;
        }
    }

    /// @dev called to increase the liquidity of the contract
    function addLiquidity(uint256 liq) public {
        liquidity += liq;
    }

    /// @dev withdraw an `amount`from multiple elements of `balances` array. The elements are provided in `indexes`
    function withdraw(uint256 amount, uint256[] memory indexes) public {
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < indexes.length; i++) {
            require(indexes[i] < SIZE, "Provided index out of bound");
            balances[indexes[i]] -= amount;
        }
    }

    /// @dev this method is called by the Automation Nodes to check if `performUpkeep` should be performed
    function checkUpkeep(
        bytes calldata /* checkData */
    )
        external
        view
        override
        returns (bool upkeepNeeded, bytes memory performData)
    {
        upkeepNeeded = false;
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < SIZE && !upkeepNeeded; i++) {
            if (balances[i] < LIMIT) {
                // if one element has a balance < LIMIT then rebalancing is needed
                upkeepNeeded = true;
            }
        }
        return (upkeepNeeded, "");
    }

    /// @dev this method is called by the Automation Nodes. it increases all elements which balances are lower than the LIMIT
    function performUpkeep(bytes calldata /* performData */) external override {
        uint256 increment;
        uint256 _balance;
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < SIZE; i++) {
            _balance = balances[i];
            // best practice: reverify the upkeep is needed
            if (_balance < LIMIT) {
                // calculate the increment needed
                increment = LIMIT - _balance;
                // decrease the contract liquidity accordingly
                liquidity -= increment;
                // rebalance the element
                balances[i] = LIMIT;
            }
        }
    }
}
Open in Remix What is Remix?

Test this example using the following steps:

  1. Deploy the contract using Remix on the supported testnet of your choice.

  2. Before registering the upkeep for your contract, decrease the balances of some elements. This simulates a situation where upkeep is required. In Remix, Withdraw 100 at indexes 10,100,300,350,500,600,670,700,900. Pass 100,[10,100,300,350,500,600,670,700,900] to the withdraw function:

    Withdraw 100 at 10,100,300,350,500,600,670,700,900

    You can also perform this step after registering the upkeep if you need to.

  3. Register the upkeep for your contract as explained here. Because this example has high gas requirements, specify the maximum allowed gas limit of 2,500,000.

  4. After the registration is confirmed, Automation Nodes perform the upkeep.

    BalancerOnChain Upkeep History

  5. Click the transaction hash to see the transaction details in Etherscan. You can find how much gas was used in the upkeep transaction.

    BalancerOnChain Gas

In this example, the performUpkeep() function used 2,481,379 gas. This example has two main issues:

  • All computation is done in performUpkeep(). This is a state modifying function which leads to high gas consumption.
  • This example is simple, but looping over large arrays with state updates can cause the transaction to hit the gas limit of the network, which prevents performUpkeep from running successfully.

To reduce these gas fees and avoid running out of gas, you can make some simple changes to the contract.

Solution: Perform complex computations with no gas fees

Modify the contract and move the computation to the checkUpkeep() function. This computation doesn’t consume any gas and supports multiple upkeeps for the same contract to do the work in parallel. The main difference between this new contract and the previous contract are:

  • The checkUpkeep() function receives checkData, which passes arbitrary bytes to the function. Pass a lowerBound and an upperBound to scope the work to a sub-array of balances. This creates several upkeeps with different values of checkData. The function loops over the sub-array and looks for the indexes of the elements that require re-balancing and calculates the required increments. Then, it returns upkeepNeeded == true and performData, which is calculated by encoding indexes and increments. Note that checkUpkeep() is a view function, so computation does not consume any gas.
  • The performUpkeep() function takes performData as a parameter and decodes it to fetch the indexes and the increments.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.7;
import "@chainlink/contracts/src/v0.8/interfaces/AutomationCompatibleInterface.sol";

/**
 * @dev Example contract which perform most of the computation in `checkUpkeep`
 *
 * @notice important to implement {AutomationCompatibleInterface}
 */

/**
 * THIS IS AN EXAMPLE CONTRACT THAT USES HARDCODED VALUES FOR CLARITY.
 * THIS IS AN EXAMPLE CONTRACT THAT USES UN-AUDITED CODE.
 * DO NOT USE THIS CODE IN PRODUCTION.
 */

contract BalancerOffChain is AutomationCompatibleInterface {
    uint256 public constant SIZE = 1000;
    uint256 public constant LIMIT = 1000;
    uint256[SIZE] public balances;
    uint256 public liquidity = 1000000;

    constructor() {
        // On the initialization of the contract, all the elements have a balance equal to the limit
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < SIZE; i++) {
            balances[i] = LIMIT;
        }
    }

    /// @dev called to increase the liquidity of the contract
    function addLiquidity(uint256 liq) public {
        liquidity += liq;
    }

    /// @dev withdraw an `amount`from multiple elements of the `balances` array. The elements are provided in `indexes`
    function withdraw(uint256 amount, uint256[] memory indexes) public {
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < indexes.length; i++) {
            require(indexes[i] < SIZE, "Provided index out of bound");
            balances[indexes[i]] -= amount;
        }
    }

    /* @dev this method is called by the Chainlink Automation Nodes to check if `performUpkeep` must be done. Note that `checkData` is used to segment the computation to subarrays.
     *
     *  @dev `checkData` is an encoded binary data and which contains the lower bound and upper bound on which to perform the computation
     *
     *  @dev return `upkeepNeeded`if rebalancing must be done and `performData` which contains an array of indexes that require rebalancing and their increments. This will be used in `performUpkeep`
     */
    function checkUpkeep(
        bytes calldata checkData
    )
        external
        view
        override
        returns (bool upkeepNeeded, bytes memory performData)
    {
        // perform the computation to a subarray of `balances`. This opens the possibility of having several checkUpkeeps done at the same time
        (uint256 lowerBound, uint256 upperBound) = abi.decode(
            checkData,
            (uint256, uint256)
        );
        require(
            upperBound < SIZE && lowerBound < upperBound,
            "Lowerbound and Upperbound not correct"
        );
        // first get number of elements requiring updates
        uint256 counter;
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < upperBound - lowerBound + 1; i++) {
            if (balances[lowerBound + i] < LIMIT) {
                counter++;
            }
        }
        // initialize array of elements requiring increments as long as the increments
        uint256[] memory indexes = new uint256[](counter);
        uint256[] memory increments = new uint256[](counter);

        upkeepNeeded = false;
        uint256 indexCounter;

        for (uint256 i = 0; i < upperBound - lowerBound + 1; i++) {
            if (balances[lowerBound + i] < LIMIT) {
                // if one element has a balance < LIMIT then rebalancing is needed
                upkeepNeeded = true;
                // store the index which needs increment as long as the increment
                indexes[indexCounter] = lowerBound + i;
                increments[indexCounter] = LIMIT - balances[lowerBound + i];
                indexCounter++;
            }
        }
        performData = abi.encode(indexes, increments);
        return (upkeepNeeded, performData);
    }

    /* @dev this method is called by the Automation Nodes. it increases all elements whose balances are lower than the LIMIT. Note that the elements are bounded by `lowerBound`and `upperBound`
     *  (provided by `performData`
     *
     *  @dev `performData` is an encoded binary data which contains the lower bound and upper bound of the subarray on which to perform the computation.
     *  it also contains the increments
     *
     *  @dev return `upkeepNeeded`if rebalancing must be done and `performData` which contains an array of increments. This will be used in `performUpkeep`
     */
    function performUpkeep(bytes calldata performData) external override {
        (uint256[] memory indexes, uint256[] memory increments) = abi.decode(
            performData,
            (uint256[], uint256[])
        );
        // important to always check that the data provided by the Automation Node is not corrupted.
        require(
            indexes.length == increments.length,
            "indexes and increments arrays' lengths not equal"
        );

        uint256 _balance;
        uint256 _liquidity = liquidity;

        for (uint256 i = 0; i < indexes.length; i++) {
            _balance = balances[indexes[i]] + increments[i];
            // important to always check that the data provided by the Automation Nodes is not corrupted. Here we check that after rebalancing, the balance of the element is equal to the LIMIT
            require(_balance == LIMIT, "Provided increment not correct");
            _liquidity -= increments[i];
            balances[indexes[i]] = _balance;
        }
        liquidity = _liquidity;
    }
}
Open in Remix What is Remix?

Run this example to compare the gas fees:

  1. Deploy the contract using Remix on the supported testnet of your choice.

  2. Withdraw 100 at 10,100,300,350,500,600,670,700,900. Pass 100,[10,100,300,350,500,600,670,700,900] to the withdraw function the same way that you did for the previous example.

  3. Register three upkeeps for your contract as explained here. Because the Automation Nodes handle much of the computation off-chain, a gas limit of 200,000 is sufficient. For each registration, pass the following checkData values to specify which balance indexes the registration will monitor. Note: You must remove any breaking line when copying the values.

    Upkeep Name CheckData(base16) Remark: calculated using abi.encode()
    balancerOffChainSubset1 0x000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    0000000000000000000000014c    		 lowerBound: 0
    upperBound: 332
    balancerOffChainSubset2 0x000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    0000000000014d000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    0000000000000000000000029a    		 lowerBound: 333
    upperBound: 666
    balancerOffChainSubset3 0x000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    0000000000029b000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000
    000000000000000000000003e7    		 lowerBound: 667
    upperBound: 999

  4. After the registration is confirmed, the three upkeeps run:

    BalancerOffChain1 History

    BalancerOffChain2 History

    BalancerOffChain3 History

  5. Click each transaction hash to see the details of each transaction in Etherscan. Find the gas used by each of the upkeep transactions:

    BalancerOffChain1 Gas

    BalancerOffChain2 Gas

    BalancerOffChain3 Gas

In this example the total gas used by each performUpkeep() function was 133,464 + 133,488 + 133,488 = 400,440. This is an improvement of about 84% compared to the previous example, which used 2,481,379 gas.

Conclusion

Using Chainlink Automation efficiently not only allows you to reduce the gas fees, but also keeps them within predictable limits. That’s the reason why several Defi protocols outsource their maintenance tasks to Chainlink Automation.

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