Skip to content

add section Upgradeable Contracts #85

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 6 commits into from
Sep 14, 2022
Merged
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
233 changes: 233 additions & 0 deletions docs/basics/upgradeability.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,233 @@
---
title: Upgradeable Contracts
slug: /basics/upgradeable-contracts
---

Even though smart contracts are intended to be immutable by design,
it is often necessary to perform an upgrade of a smart contract.

The developer may need to fix a critical bug or introduce a new feature.

For this type of scenario, ink! has different upgrade strategies.
- [Proxy Forwarding](#proxy-forwarding)
- [Properties](#properties)
- [Replacing Contract Code with `set_code_hash()`](#replacing-contract-code-with-set_code_hash)
- [Properties](#properties-1)
- [Storage Compatibility](#storage-compatibility)
- [A little note on the determinism of contract addresses](#a-little-note-on-the-determinism-of-contract-addresses)
- [Examples](#examples)

## Proxy Forwarding

This method relies on the ability of contracts to proxy calls to other contracts.

### Properties

- Forwards any call that does not match a selector of itself to another contract.
- The other contract needs to be deployed on-chain.
- State is stored in the storage of the contract to which calls are forwarded.

```
User ---- tx ---> Proxy ----------> Implementation_v0
|
------------> Implementation_v1
|
------------> Implementation_v2
```

Our proxy contract will have these 2 storage fields:

```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct Proxy {
/// The `AccountId` of a contract where any call that does not match a
/// selector of this contract is forwarded to.
forward_to: AccountId,
/// The `AccountId` of a privileged account that can update the
/// forwarding address. This address is set to the account that
/// instantiated this contract.
admin: AccountId,
}
```

We then need a way to change the address of a contract to which we forward calls to
and the actual message selector to proxy the call:

```rust
impl Proxy {
/// Changes the `AccountId` of the contract where any call that does
/// not match a selector of this contract is forwarded to.
#[ink(message)]
pub fn change_forward_address(&mut self, new_address: AccountId) {
assert_eq!(
self.env().caller(),
self.admin,
"caller {:?} does not have sufficient permissions, only {:?} does",
self.env().caller(),
self.admin,
);
self.forward_to = new_address;
}

/// Fallback message for a contract call that doesn't match any
/// of the other message selectors.
///
/// # Note:
///
/// - We allow payable messages here and would forward any optionally supplied
/// value as well.
/// - If the self receiver were `forward(&mut self)` here, this would not
/// have any effect whatsoever on the contract we forward to.
#[ink(message, payable, selector = _)]
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Can you add a note after this code snippet highlighting the catch all selector? We should also link to the docs that Cyrill recently wrote

pub fn forward(&self) -> u32 {
ink_env::call::build_call::<ink_env::DefaultEnvironment>()
.call_type(
Call::new()
.callee(self.forward_to)
.transferred_value(self.env().transferred_value())
.gas_limit(0),
)
.call_flags(
ink_env::CallFlags::default()
.set_forward_input(true)
.set_tail_call(true),
)
.fire()
.unwrap_or_else(|err| {
panic!(
"cross-contract call to {:?} failed due to {:?}",
self.forward_to, err
)
});
unreachable!(
"the forwarded call will never return since `tail_call` was set"
);
}
}
```

:::tip

Take a look at the selector pattern in the attribute macro: by declaring `selector = _`
we specify that all other messages should be handled by this message selector.

:::

Using this pattern, you can introduce other message to your proxy contract.
Any messages that are not matched in the proxy contract
will be forwarded to the specified contract address.

## Replacing Contract Code with `set_code_hash()`

Following [Substrate's runtime upgradeability](https://docs.substrate.io/tutorials/get-started/forkless-upgrade/)
philosophy, ink! also supports an easy way to update your contract code via the special function
[`set_code_hash()`](https://paritytech.github.io/ink/ink_env/fn.set_code_hash.html).

### Properties

- Updates the contract code using `set_code_hash()`.
This effectively replaces the code which is executed for the contract address.
- The other contract needs to be deployed on-chain.
- State is stored in the storage of the originally instantiated contract.

Just add the following function to the contract you want to upgrade in the future.

```rust
/// Modifies the code which is used to execute calls to this contract address (`AccountId`).
///
/// We use this to upgrade the contract logic. We don't do any authorization here, any caller
/// can execute this method. In a production contract you would do some authorization here.
#[ink(message)]
pub fn set_code(&mut self, code_hash: [u8; 32]) {
ink_env::set_code_hash(&code_hash).unwrap_or_else(|err| {
panic!(
"Failed to `set_code_hash` to {:?} due to {:?}",
code_hash, err
)
});
ink_env::debug_println!("Switched code hash to {:?}.", code_hash);
}
```

### Storage Compatibility

It is the developer's responsibility to ensure
that the new contract's storage is compatible with the storage of the contract that is replaced.

:::danger Beware

You should not change the order in which the contract state variables are declared, nor their type!

Violating the restriction will not prevent a successful compilation,
but will result in **the mix-up of values** or **failure to read the storage correctly**.
This can be a result of severe errors in the application utilizing the contract.

:::


If the storage of your contract looks like this:
```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct YourContract {
x: u32,
y: bool,
}
```

The procedures listed below will make it ***invalid***

Changing the order of variables:

```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct YourContract {
y: bool,
x: u32,
}
```

Removing an existing variable:

```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct YourContract {
x: u32,
}
```

Changing the type of a variable:

```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct YourContract {
x: u64,
y: bool,
}
```

Introducing a new variable before any of the existing ones:

```rust
#[ink(storage)]
pub struct YourContract {
z: Vec<u32>,
x: u32,
y: bool,
}
```

### A little note on the determinism of contract addresses

:::note

If your contract utilizes this approach, it no-longer holds a deterministic address assumption.
You can no longer assume that a contract address identifies a specific code hash.
Please refer to [the issue](https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/10690#issuecomment-1025702389)
for more details.

:::

## Examples

Examples of upgradable contracts can be found in the
[ink! repository](https://github.com/paritytech/ink/tree/master/examples/upgradeable-contracts)
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions sidebars.js
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ module.exports = {
'basics/events',
'basics/trait-definitions',
'basics/cross-contract-calling',
'basics/upgradeability',
'basics/testing',
'basics/env-functions',
'basics/metadata',
Expand Down