Introduction

What problem does this solve?

The simplest way to explain the utility of the EAC is to explain the problem it solves.

We will begin with a refresher about the two types of accounts on Ethereum and the differences between them. There exists:

  1. User accounts (controlled by the holder of the private key)
  2. Contracts (which are not controlled by a private key)

User accounts are the accounts that humans control and operate. The controller of a user account is always the person who holds the private key. In contrast, contract accounts are not controlled by a private key but are instead deployed code which execute in a determined way when they are called.

All code execution in the Ethreum Virtual Machine (the EVM) must be triggered by a private key based account. This is done by sending a transaction, which may do something simple like transfering ether, or it may do something more complex like calling a function on a contract account.

Whenever a user account initiates a contract account, the execution of the contract is immediate. Therefore all calls to contract accounts are included in the same block as the initial call.

The Ethereum protocol does not provide any way to create a transaction to be executed at a later time. So, if a developer is creating an application that needs to fire off transactions that must happen at a future date or if a user would like to perform an action at a specific time without being present, there is no inherent way to do this on Ethereum.

The EAC service aims to solve these issues while also creating a decentralized incentive based protocol that ensures pretty good guarantees that someone will execute all scheduled transactions.

How transactions are executed

When a user schedules a new transaction, they are deploying a new smart contract that holds all of the information necessary for the execution of the transaction. A good analogy to compare this smart contract to is an order on an exchange. When this contract “order” is called during the specified execution window, the contract will send the transaction as set by the user. It will also pay the account that triggered the execution and if a fee was specified in the data, a transaction to the fee recipient.

These contracts are of the type called TransactionRequest and are written to provide strong guarantees of correctness to both parties.

The creator of the TransactionRequest contract can know that their transaction will only be sent during the window they specified and that the transaction parameters will be sent exactly as specified.

Similarly, the account that executes the TransactionRequest contract can know that no matter what occurs during the execution of the transaction (including if the transaction fails) that they will receive full gas reimbursement as well as their payment for execution.

Execution guarantees

You may have noted at this point that this service relies on external parties to initiate the execution of these transactions. This means that it is possible that your transaction will not be executed at all. Indeed, if no one is running an execution client then your transaction will not be executed and will expire. However, incentives have been baked into the system to encourage the running of execution clients and the hope is that many parties will compete for the rights to execute transactions.

In an ideal situation, there is a sufficient volume of scheduled transactions that operating a server to execute these transactions is a profitable endeavor.

How scheduling transactions works

A transaction is scheduled by providing some or all of the following information.

  • Details about the transaction itself such as which address the transaction should be sent to, or how much ether should be sent with the transaction.
  • Details about when the transaction can be executed. This includes things like the window of time or blocks during which this transaction can be executed.
  • Ether to pay for the transaction gas costs as well as the payment that will be paid to the account that triggers the transaction.

Scheduling is done by calling a Scheduler contract which handles creation of the individual TransactionRequest contract.