@api3/airnode-protocol-v1

Airnode protocol v1

This package temporarily houses the Airnode v1 protocol contracts. With the Airnode v1 release, these contracts will be migrated into the Airnode monorepo.

If you are looking for the contracts that Airnode v0 uses, see @api3/airnode-protocol. If you are looking for how to operate an Airnode, see the docs.

Instructions

Install the dependencies and build

yarn
yarn build

Test the contracts, get test coverage and gas reports

yarn test
# Runs exhaustive tests for Sort.sol
yarn test:extended
# Outputs to `./coverage`
yarn test:coverage
# Outputs to `.gas_report`
yarn test:gas

Overview

• access-control-registry/: Contracts typically implement standalone access control schemes, ranging from inheriting Ownable to customized complex models. This makes it difficult to track the privileges that an account has granted, which has negative usability and security implications. This issue is more relevant in a decentralized governance context, e.g., a DAO would need to delegate privileges to less decentralized agents, audit their performance, and revoke privileges in case they are abused. For such an approach to work, the granted privileges need to be easily discoverable. AccessControlRegistry is a shared registry that accounts can create tree-shaped role structures, which other contracts can refer to.

• protocol/: "The Airnode protocol" refers to two protocols: request-response protocol (RRP) and publish–subscribe protocol (PSP). RRP is the pull version ("What is the price of Bitcoin?") and PSP is the pull version ("Call me back when the price of Bitcoin is $50,000.") An Airnode detects RRP requests by listening to events from AirnodeProtocol, and PSP subscriptions by querying the respective Allocators. There are also relayed versions of RRP and PSP, where the requester specifies a relayer to deliver the response signed by an Airnode.

• allocators/: An Airnode that supports PSP needs to detect potential subscriptions to serve. To avoid having to manually configure the Airnode to update the subscriptions, the node operator can configure it to refer to specific Allocator contracts. These contracts implement custom rules regarding how the subscriptions can be updated, which likely involve monetization.

• authorizers/: An Airnode that detects RRP requests or PSP subscriptions needs to know which of these should be served. To avoid having to manually configure the Airnode to maintain a whitelist, the node operator can configure it to refer to specific Authorizer contracts. These contracts implement custom rules regarding which requests and subscriptions should be served, which likely involve monetization.

• dapis/: The DapiServer contract implements Beacons, which are single-Airnode data feeds. Beacons can be combined to create Beacon sets, which are asynchronously aggregated Beacons (we refer to both Beacons and Beacon sets as "data feeds"). Finally, dAPIs are names that are attached to Beacons or Beacon sets, which can be seen as API3-managed data feeds. DapiServer uses RRP and PSP to update data feeds, which makes this contract a very good example of how the Airnode protocol can be used. In addition, DapiServer allows data signed by the respective Airnodes to update data feeds, which can be delivered outside of the protocol. This is especially useful for Beacon set updates, which the Airnode protocol is not suitable for because it is designed to have the Airnode interact with the chain directly. Finally, a special version of these signed data updates are used to capture oracle extractable value (OEV).

• utils/: As the name suggests, utility contracts that the other contracts may require. Multicall contracts are aimed to minimize Airnode RPC calls and improve UX for non-protocol contracts. OwnableCallForwarder enables the role trees in AccessControlRegistry to be transferrable. ExpiringMetaTxForwarder allows Airnode operators or acounts authorized by them to issue signatures to have users self-whitelist.

Design pillars

Protocolization: API3 aims to build oracle services that are powered entirely by first-party oracles, i.e., oracles operated by API providers. This means we cannot offload our problems to node operators, both the node and its protocol needs to be set-and-forget. This is best reflected in PSP, which allows one to set up data feeds (and many other kinds of oracle services) remotely, without requiring any effort from the node operator.

It should be noted that we also consider the oracle business model to be an extension of the protocol, and also aim for a set-and-forget business model. Allocators and Authorizers are the stubs that we build into the data protocol for monetization to also be protocolized, and we will release contracts that fully flesh this out in the future.

Specificity: A common pitfall in protocol design is over-generalization in an attempt to cover all potential use-cases. This creates a lot of abstraction that the user now needs to learn, while not providing any structure that the user can work off of. In contrast, we went with an opinionated approach by providing scaffolds into the direction we think the user should build towards.

Immutability: API3 aims to build trust-miminized oracles services, which means one should only have to trust the data sources (which is unavoidable) and no one else. Governance, even by a DAO, contaminates this trust-minimization. To avoid this, we do two things: (1) Our contracts are not upgradeable, as this unavoidably requires some kind of governance. (2) Endpoints defined in OIS (oracle integration specifications) are identified by endpoint IDs, endpoint IDs and Airnode ABI-encoded parameters constitute template IDs, Airnode addresses and template IDs constitute Beacon IDs, and Beacon IDs constitute Beacon set IDs. Therefore, it is possible to track the entire data supply chain starting from the API all the way to the aggregated data feed easily and in a trust-minimized way.

Optimistic scaling: Our solutions are generally built optimistically, with one tamper-proof and highly efficient solution, and one trust-minimized and less efficient solution. The first solution is tamper-proof because it depends on signatures from the first-party Airnode, yet its delivery is centralized for performance. The only risk with this solution is for it to become unavailable, in which case the trust-minimized solution should be seamlessly fallen back to. For an oracle service to be trust-minimized, it must interact with the chain directly. Depending on a third-party relay, or requiring to interact with other oracle nodes through a blockchain or a state channel is considered unacceptable for the trust-minimized solution, as this introduces additional points of failure.

An example of this can be seen in DapiServer, where Beacon sets are updated by collecting signed data from Airnodes and calling updateDataFeedWithSignedData() by a centralized agent. In the event that this service stops, Airnodes can update their respective Beacons by calling fulfillPspBeaconUpdate() if they have PSP subscriptions, or they can use updateDataFeedWithSignedData() only with their own signed data to update their respective Beacon (as byog does), after which the Beacon set can be updated by anyone by calling updateBeaconSetWithBeacons() or through a PSP subscription that will call fulfillPspBeaconSetUpdate() based on deviation conditions. The latter method of doing things is not expected to be used, yet it existing as a failsafe makes the former method acceptable.

Implementation details

AccessControlRegistry and role trees

The contracts that use AccessControlRegistry in this repo (i.e., the AccessControlRegistryAdminned contracts) use the following convention to create role trees per contract.

Root
  └─── Admin (can grant and revoke the roles below)
        ├── Contract specific role #1
        ├── Contract specific role #2
        └── Contract specific role #3

Here, the root role is immutably tied to an account. The contract admin role is derived from the root role and the contract admin role description. This implies that contracts that have the same contract admin role description will share role trees.

...WithManager vs ...WithAirnode

There are two types of AccessControlRegistryAdminned contracts in this repo, ones that end with ...WithManager and ones that end with ...WithAirnode. This essentially refers to if the root role belongs to a manager account (e.g., the API3 DAO), or if this is a shared account where each Airnode manages their own role tree and associated privileges. Note that when applicable the root role is tied to the manager account immutably, which means if you want the managership to be transferrable, you should designate OwnableCallForwarder (which is an Ownable contract whose ownership can be transferred) to be the manager and make your calls through that.

Relayed RRP and PSP

RRP and PSP have relayed versions where the requester specifies a relayer to deliver data signed by the respective Airnode. Note that our aim here was to replicate the entire RRP and PSP functionality in relayed form, rather than to design a relay-based oracle protocol. Since relaying for RRP and PSP requires the relayer to be trusted—not for not tampering with data, but for not denying service and in the PSP case not delivering fulfillments even when the conditions are not satisfied—it is more suitable for a trusted relayer to be specified.

Sponsor and sponsor wallets

We have determined the gas cost of oracle services to be a very significant friction point for business models. Although relaying signed data is a nicer alternative here, as discussed above, we find this far from being trust-minimized by itself. As a solution, we built a scheme into the protocol that allows the users to cover the gas costs caused by their usage. You can refer to the v0 docs for this, as the concept has not changed since then: https://docs.api3.org/airnode/latest/concepts/sponsor.html

Sponsorship is done on a per-requester basis for RRP, and on a per-subscription basis for PSP. Relaying services suffer from the same gas cost issues as oracle services, and since the requester knows the relayer beforehand and trusts them to the degree that they get the relay service from them, we expect the same sponsorship scheme to be applicable. Sponsor wallets for protocols and their relayed versions are kept separately, while the sponsorship statuses are unified. In other words, when a sponsor sponsors a requester for RRP, they also sponsor them for relayed RRP. However, two separate sponsor wallets will be kept for the requester, one for RRP and one for relayed RRP.

Not requiring Airnode operator transactions

In a first-part oracle setting, requiring the Airnode operators to make any transactions is a significant friction point. This is why the Airnode operator does not need to deploy a contract of their own (they use the shared AirnodeProtocol contract) or make a transaction to announce anything. To opt in or out of a monetization scheme, they simply need to update their configuration file to add or remove Allocators and Authorizers and redeploy, and communicate that they have done so through off-chain channels.

Data feed monetization

In addition to service coverage, we expect the main data feed monetization model to be based on OEV (see Figure 1 in the litepaper). To implement this in the most optimized way, we built it into DapiServer, yet data feed users can opt out of it if they wish to.

Data feed proxies

Data feeds are popular oracle services mostly because they are simple and highly standardized. Even so, it is a challenge to have the user correctly execute integrations, and providing technical support is not a scalable solution. We aim our user onboarding process to be entirely automated, and we have many variants of the same data feeds (does the user want to read the dAPI, the Beacon set that the dAPI points to, OEV enabled or disabled, with or without security coverage, etc.) To solve both of these problems at once, we decided to enable users to use the API3 Market to deploy proxies that implement the integration they need programmatically. As a result, whatever API3 data feed a user uses, all they need to will be to call the read() function of a contract.

To minimize the overhead of using proxies, we preferred having them deployed normally (instead of being cloned). To reduce the deployment cost of these proxies, we pushed as much of the implementation into DapiServer.

Expiring meta-transactions

AccessControlRegistry, Allocators and Authorizers support meta-transactions. This is mostly considering the fact that the users will want Airnode operators to make transactions, and the Airnode operators will not want to pay for the gas cost of these transactions. Considering our requirements and expected usage scenarios, we ended up with a customized meta-transaction implementation that we fully accept to not be suitable for general purpose usage. The main points here are that we did not use a nonce because we do not want meta-transactions to block each other, and we have an expiration timestamp to avoid dangling liabilities. As a further precaution, we allowed the signer to cancel meta-transactions (that are not executed yet) with a transaction of their own.