What is ecrecover in Solidity?
A dive into the waters of signatures for smart contracts
Ever wondered what the hell the deal is with the ecrecover command in Solidity?
It's all about signatures and keys...
What is ecrecover ?
You may have seen ecrecover in a Solidity contract before and wondered what exactly the deal with this was. Well you came across the EVM precompile ecrecover. A precompile just means a common functionality for smart contracts which has been compiled, so Ethereum nodes can run this efficiently. From a contract's perspective this is just a single command like an opcode.
Look at the following code:
function recoverSignerFromSignature(uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s, bytes32 hash) external {
address signer = ecrecover(hash, v, r, s);
require(signer != address(0), "ECDSA: invalid signature");
}This is essentially how one would use it, though there's more to it than this. Don't actually use above code in production as Patricio Palladino correctly pointed out. The correct way is shown in the last examples at the bottom of this post.
So what does all this mean? Assuming you are familiar with the basic concepts of public key cryptography, this will be easy to understand.
You may know that whenever you send a transaction to the Ethereum network, you have to sign this transaction with your private key. Naturally it makes sense to assume that Ethereum nodes have some way to verify a signature.
This functionality of verifying a signature was added to the smart contract itself. With this you can verify much more than just the transaction signature itself. In fact you can pass any data to a smart contract, hash it and then verify its signature against the data. The signature in the code above is the combination of v, r and s.
Why would I need this?
We've actually discussed several examples of how one would use this before. Those included
Essentially you can verify signed data which doesn't have to come from the transaction signer.
Which signing standards should I use?
First we need to decide on the type of signature. Yes that's right. While only for the ecrecover part this doesn't matter, for the parts around it there have been several standards that can be used by a client to sign data using an Ethereum key:
- eth_sign
- personal_sign
- EIP-712
eth_sign is for signing arbitrary data. This makes it the most powerful, the simplest (just sign data), but also the most dangerous. The big problem here is that you could get users to sign data which is actually a transaction. Imagine you have users login to your service, but you make them sign data which is actually a transaction that is 'Send 5 ETH form user to attacker'. A transaction just consists of bytes after all and people are likely to not check what this string of characters they are signing actually means. What seems like a harmless sign in just became an attack to steal funds. So generally usage of eth_sign directly is discouraged.
personal_sign was later added to solve this issue. The method prefixed any signed data with "\x19Ethereum Signed Message:\n" which meant if one was to sign transaction data, the added prefix string would make it an invalid transaction.
For more complex use cases, in particular when used in a smart contract, the EIP-712 standard was created. The standard changed over time, but the currently last version which is supported by MetaMask is signTypedData_v4. Or you could use a specific library like eip-712. The main problem EIP-712 solves is to ensure users know exactly what they are signing, for which contract address and network, and that each signature can only ever be used once at maximum. In short, this is done by signing hashes of all required configuration data (address, chain id, version, data types) + the actual data itself. ERC20-Permit is a great example on how to use it.
All functions can be used when interacting with MetaMask, see examples here. Alternatively they are available in the eth-sig-util library.
So back to the question 'Which signing standards should I use?'. From a contract's perspective use the latest EIP-712 standard! eth_sign is not safe and personal_sign is mostly useful for implementing user sign in features. In your contracts stick to EIP-712.
How to implement EIP-712
Now let's see how to implement EIP-712 in Solidity. The rough idea is
- compute a domain hash which captures the configuration data of contract address and chainId
- compute typed data hash
- combine both hashes and use it inside ecrecover
I would personally also recommend adding a nonce and deadline value which prevent replay attacks and ensure execution within a specific time. Those are not part of EIP-712 standard directly, but can easily be added. Below you'll find an example how to do all that and then execute a function with the parameters on the contract itself.
function executeMyFunctionFromSignature(
uint8 v,
bytes32 r,
bytes32 s,
address owner,
uint256 myParam,
uint256 deadline
) external {
bytes32 eip712DomainHash = keccak256(
abi.encode(
keccak256(
"EIP712Domain(string name,string version,uint256 chainId,address verifyingContract)"
),
keccak256(bytes("MyContractName")),
keccak256(bytes("1")),
block.chainid,
address(this)
)
);
bytes32 hashStruct = keccak256(
abi.encode(
keccak256("MyFunction(address owner,uint256 myParam,uint256 nonce,uint256 deadline)"),
owner,
myParam,
nonces[owner],
deadline
)
);
bytes32 hash = keccak256(abi.encodePacked("\x19\x01", eip712DomainHash, hashStruct));
address signer = ecrecover(hash, v, r, s);
require(signer == owner, "MyFunction: invalid signature");
require(signer != address(0), "ECDSA: invalid signature");
require(block.timestamp < deadline, "MyFunction: signed transaction expired");
nonces[owner]++;
_myFunction(owner, myParam);
}Security issues with ecrecover + solution
There are a few problems with ecrecover which are not present in above code, but which you should be aware of.
- In some cases ecrecover can return a random address instead of 0 for an invalid signature. This is prevented above by the owner address inside the typed data.
- Signature are malleable, meaning you might be able to create a second also valid signature for the same data. In our case we are not using the signature data itself (which one may do as an id for example).
- An attacker can construct a hash and signature that look valid if the hash is not computed within the contract itself.
In practice I would recommend once again to use the Openzeppelin contracts. Their ECDSA implementation solves all three problems and they have an EIP-712 implementation (still a draft but usable in my opinion). Not only is this easier to use, but they also have further improvements:
- caching mechanism for eip712DomainHash, so it's only calculated whenever chainId changes (so usually just once)
- additional security checks for the signature as mentioned above
- ability to send signature as string
The code from above would then be reduced to this:
import "@openzeppelin-contracts/contracts/utils/cryptography/ECDSA.sol";
import "@openzeppelin-contracts/contracts/utils/cryptography/draft-EIP712.sol";
contract MyContract is EIP712 {
function executeMyFunctionFromSignature(
bytes memory signature,
address owner,
uint256 myParam,
uint256 deadline
) external {
bytes32 digest = _hashTypedDataV4(keccak256(abi.encode(
keccak256("MyFunction(address owner,uint256 myParam,uint256 nonce,uint256 deadline)"),
owner,
myParam,
nonces[owner],
deadline
)));
address signer = ECDSA.recover(digest, signature);
require(signer == owner, "MyFunction: invalid signature");
require(signer != address(0), "ECDSA: invalid signature");
require(block.timestamp < deadline, "MyFunction: signed transaction expired");
nonces[owner]++;
_myFunction(owner, myParam);
}
}That's it. Again this is the currently latest v4 standard of EIP-712. If you come across EIP-712 implementations in other contracts, be aware of which version is used.
Also as a last note, debugging invalid signatures can be very painful as any small difference in any value will lead to an invalid signature, but you don't know which of the data might be wrong. So make sure to double check all your input if you ever run into invalid signatures.
Another interesting standard is EIP-1271. Since smart contracts in Ethereum don't have a private key behind them, they cannot create those v, r, s signatures. But with this standard it's still possible to have signatures created by a contract itself, see the bottom of my previous post here.
Solidity Developer
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Contract factories and clones
How to deploy contracts within contracts as easily and gas-efficient as possible
The factory design pattern is a pretty common pattern used in programming. The idea is simple, instead of creating objects directly, you have an object (the factory) that creates objects for you. In the case of Solidity, an object is a smart contract and so a factory will deploy new contracts for...
How to use IPFS in your Dapp?
Using the interplanetary file system in your frontend and contracts
You may have heard about IPFS before, the Interplanetary File System. The concept has existed for quite some time now, but with IPFS you'll get a more reliable data storage, thanks to their internal use of blockchain technology. Filecoin is a new system that is incentivizing storage for IPFS...
Downsizing contracts to fight the contract size limit
What can you do to prevent your contracts from getting too large?
Why is there a limit? On November 22, 2016 the Spurious Dragon hard-fork introduced EIP-170 which added a smart contract size limit of 24.576 kb. For you as a Solidity developer this means when you add more and more functionality to your contract, at some point you will reach the limit and when...
Using EXTCODEHASH to secure your systems
How to safely integrate anyone's smart contract
What is the EXTCODEHASH? The EVM opcode EXTCODEHASH was added on February 28, 2019 via EIP-1052. Not only does it help to reduce external function calls for compiled Solidity contracts, it also adds additional functionality. It gives you the hash of the code from an address. Since only contract...
Using the new Uniswap v2 in your contracts
What's new in Uniswap v2 and how to integrate Uniswap v2
Note : For Uniswap 3 check out the tutorial here. What is UniSwap? If you're not familiar with Uniswap yet, it's a fully decentralized protocol for automated liquidity provision on Ethereum. An easier-to-understand description would be that it's a decentralized exchange (DEX) relying on external...
Solidity and Truffle Continuous Integration Setup
How to setup Travis or Circle CI for Truffle testing along with useful plugins.
Continuous integration (CI) with Truffle is great for developing once you have a basic set of tests implemented. It allows you to run very long tests, ensure all tests pass before merging a pull request and to keep track of various statistics using additional tools. We will use the Truffle...
Upcoming Devcon 2021 and other events
The Ethereum Foundation just announced the next Devcon in 2021 in Colombia
Biggest virtual hackathon almost finished First of all, the current HackMoney event has come to an end and it has been a massive success. One can only imagine what kind of cool projects people have built in a 30 days hackathon. All final projects can be seen at:...
The Year of the 20: Creating an ERC20 in 2020
How to use the latest and best tools to create an ERC-20 token contract
You know what an ERC-20 is, you probably have created your own versions of it several times (if not, have a look at: ERC-20). But how would you start in 2020 using the latest tools? Let's create a new ERC-2020 token contract with some basic functionality which focuses on simplicity and latest...
How to get a Solidity developer job?
There are many ways to get a Solidity job and it might be easier than you think!
You have mastered the basics of Solidity, created your first few useful projects and now want to get your hands on some real-world projects. Getting a Solidity developer job might be easier than you think. There are generally plenty of options to choose from and often times not a lot of...
Design Pattern Solidity: Mock contracts for testing
Why you should make fun of your contracts
Mock objects are a common design pattern in object-oriented programming. Coming from the old French word 'mocquer' with the meaning of 'making fun of', it evolved to 'imitating something real' which is actually what we are doing in programming. Please only make fun of your smart contracts if you...
Kickstart your Dapp frontend development with create-eth-app
An overview on how to use the app and its features
Last time we looked at the big picture of Solidity and already mentioned the create-eth-app. Now you will find out how to use it, what features are integrated and additional ideas on how to expand on it. Started by Paul Razvan Berg, the founder of sablier, this app will kickstart your frontend...
The big picture of Solidity and Blockchain development in 2020
Overview of the most important technologies, services and tools that you need to know
Now, I do not know about you, but I remember when I first started with Solidity development being very confused by all the tools and services and how they work in connection with one another. If you are like me, this overview will help you understand the big picture of Solidity development. As I...
Design Pattern Solidity: Free up unused storage
Why you should clean up after yourself
You may or may not be used to a garbage collectors in your previous programming language. There is no such thing in Solidity and even if there was a similar concept, you would still be better off managing state data yourself. Only you as a programmer can know exactly which data will not be used...
How to setup Solidity Developer Environment on Windows
What you need to know about developing on Windows
Using Windows for development, especially for Solidity development, can be a pain sometimes, but it does not have to be. Once you have configured your environment properly, it can actually be extremely efficient and Windows is a very, very stable OS, so your overall experience can be amazing. The...
Avoiding out of gas for Truffle tests
How you do not have to worry about gas in tests anymore
You have probably seen this error message a lot of times: Error: VM Exception while processing transaction: out of gas Disclaimer : Unfortunately, this does not always actually mean what it is saying when using Truffle , especially for older versions. It can occur for various reasons and might be...
Design Pattern Solidity: Stages
How you can design stages in your contract
Closely related to the concept of finite-state machines, this pattern will help you restrict functions in your contract. You will find a lot of situations where it might be useful. Any time a contract should allow function calls only in certain stages. Let's look at an example: contract Pool {...
Web3 1.2.5: Revert reason strings
How to use the new feature
A new Web3 version was just released and it comes with a new feature that should make your life easier. With the latest version 1.2.5, you can now see the the revert reason if you use the new handleRevert option. You can activate it easily by using web3.eth.handleRevert = true . Now when you use...
Gaining back control of the internet
How Ocelot is decentralizing cloud computing
I recently came across an ambitious company that will completely redefine the way we are using the internet. Or rather, the way we are using its underlying infrastructure which ultimately is the internet. While looking at their offering, I also learned how to get anonymous cloud machines, you...
Devcon 5 - Review
Impressions from the conference
I had a lot to catch up on after Devcon. Also things didn't go quite as planned, so please excuse my delayed review! This year's Devcon was certainly stormy with a big typhoon warning already on day 1. Luckily (for us, not the people in Tokyo), it went right past Osaka. Nevertheless, a lot of...
Devcon 5 - Information, Events, Links, Telegram
What you need to know
Devcon 5 is coming up soon and there are already lots of events available, information about Osaka and more. Here is a short overview: Events Events Calendar Events Google Docs Events Kickback Most events are in all three, but if you really want to see all, you will have to look at all three...
Design Pattern Solidity: Off-chain beats on-chain
Why you should do as much as possible off-chain
As you might have realized, Ethereum transactions are anything but cheap. In particular, if you are computing complex things or storing a lot of data. That means sometimes we cannot put all logic inside Solidity. Instead, we can utilize off-chain computations to help us. A very simple example...
Design Pattern Solidity: Initialize Contract after Deployment
How to use the Initializable pattern
There are a few reasons why you might want to initialize a contract after deployment and not directly by passing constructor arguments. But first let's look at an example: contract MyCrowdsale { uint256 rate; function initialize(uint256 _rate) public { rate = _rate; } } What's the advantage over...
Consensys Blockchain Jobs Report
What the current blockchain job market looks like
Consensys published their blockchain jobs report which you can checkout in their Blockchain Developer Job Kit. The most interesting aspects are Blockchain developer jobs have been growing at a rate of 33x of the previous year according to LinkedIns jobs report Typical salary is about...
Provable — Randomness Oracle
How the Oraclize random number generator works
One particularly interesting approach by Provable is the usage of a hardware security device, namely the Ledger Nano S. It uses a trusted execution environment to generate random numbers and provides a Provable Connector Contract as interface. How to use the Provable Randomness Oracle? Use the...
Solidity Design Patterns: Multiply before Dividing
Why the correct order matters!
There has been a lot of progress since the beginning of Ethereum about best practices in Solidity. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that most of the knowledge is within the circle of experienced people and there aren’t that many online resources about it. That is why I would like to start this...
Devcon 5 Applications closing in one week
Devcon 5 Applications closing
Watch out for the Devcon 5 applications. You only have one week left to apply either as Buidler Student Scholarship Press Devcon is by far the biggest and most impressive Ethereum conference in the world. And it's full of developers! I am especially excited about the cool location this year in...
Randomness and the Blockchain
How to achieve secure randomness for Solidity smart contracts?
Update 2023 : Ethereum transitioned to Proof of Stake! If you are interested in the randomness there, you can now use the updated info over at https://soliditydeveloper.com/prevrandao. When we talk about randomness and blockchain, these are really two problems: How to generate randomness in smart...