.. index:: auction;open, open auction
As an introductory example of a smart contract written in Vyper, we will begin with a simple open auction contract. As we dive into the code, it is important to remember that all Vyper syntax is valid Python3 syntax, however not all Python3 functionality is available in Vyper.
In this contract, we will be looking at a simple open auction contract where participants can submit bids during a limited time period. When the auction period ends, a predetermined beneficiary will receive the amount of the highest bid.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/simple_open_auction.vy :language: python :linenos:
As you can see, this example only has a constructor, two methods to call, and a few variables to manage the contract state. Believe it or not, this is all we need for a basic implementation of an auction smart contract.
Let's get started!
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/simple_open_auction.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 3 :lines: 3-17
We begin by declaring a few variables to keep track of our contract state.
We initialize a global variable beneficiary by calling public on the
datatype address. The beneficiary will be the receiver of money from
the highest bidder. We also initialize the variables auctionStart and
auctionEnd with the datatype uint256 to manage the open auction
period and highestBid with datatype uint256, the smallest
denomination of ether, to manage auction state. The variable ended is a
boolean to determine whether the auction is officially over. The variable pendingReturns is a map which
enables the use of key-value pairs to keep proper track of the auctions withdrawal pattern.
You may notice all of the variables being passed into the public
function. By declaring the variable public, the variable is
callable by external contracts. Initializing the variables without the public
function defaults to a private declaration and thus only accessible to methods
within the same contract. The public function additionally creates a
‘getter’ function for the variable, accessible through an external call such as
contract.beneficiary().
Now, the constructor.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/simple_open_auction.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 22 :lines: 22-27
The contract is initialized with three arguments: _beneficiary of type
address, _auction_start with type uint256 and _bidding_time with
type uint256, the time difference between the start and end of the auction. We
then store these three pieces of information into the contract variables
self.beneficiary, self.auctionStart and self.auctionEnd respectively.
Notice that we have access to the current time by calling block.timestamp.
block is an object available within any Vyper contract and provides information
about the block at the time of calling. Similar to block, another important object
available to us within the contract is msg, which provides information on the method
caller as we will soon see.
With initial setup out of the way, lets look at how our users can make bids.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/simple_open_auction.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 33 :lines: 33-46
The @payable decorator will allow a user to send some ether to the
contract in order to call the decorated method. In this case, a user wanting
to make a bid would call the bid() method while sending an amount equal
to their desired bid (not including gas fees). When calling any method within a
contract, we are provided with a built-in variable msg and we can access
the public address of any method caller with msg.sender. Similarly, the
amount of ether a user sends can be accessed by calling msg.value.
Here, we first check whether the current time is within the bidding period by
comparing with the auction's start and end times using the assert function
which takes any boolean statement. We also check to see if the new bid is greater
than the highest bid. If the three assert statements pass, we can safely continue
to the next lines; otherwise, the bid() method will throw an error and revert the
transaction. If the two assert statements and the check that the previous bid is
not equal to zero pass, we can safely conclude that we have a valid new highest bid.
We will send back the previous highestBid to the previous highestBidder and set
our new highestBid and highestBidder.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/simple_open_auction.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 60 :lines: 60-85
With the endAuction() method, we check whether our current time is past
the auctionEnd time we set upon initialization of the contract. We also
check that self.ended had not previously been set to True. We do this
to prevent any calls to the method if the auction had already ended,
which could potentially be malicious if the check had not been made.
We then officially end the auction by setting self.ended to True
and sending the highest bid amount to the beneficiary.
And there you have it - an open auction contract. Of course, this is a simplified example with barebones functionality and can be improved. Hopefully, this has provided some insight into the possibilities of Vyper. As we move on to exploring more complex examples, we will encounter more design patterns and features of the Vyper language.
And of course, no smart contract tutorial is complete without a note on security.
Note
It's always important to keep security in mind when designing a smart contract. As any application becomes more complex, the greater the potential for introducing new risks. Thus, it's always good practice to keep contracts as readable and simple as possible.
Whenever you're ready, let's turn it up a notch in the next example.
.. index:: auction;blind, blind auction
Before we dive into our other examples, let's briefly explore another type of auction that you can build with Vyper. Similar to its counterpart written in Solidity, this blind auction allows for an auction where there is no time pressure towards the end of the bidding period.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/blind_auction.vy :language: python :linenos:
While this blind auction is almost functionally identical to the blind auction implemented in Solidity, the differences in their implementations help illustrate the differences between Solidity and Vyper.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/auctions/blind_auction.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 28 :lines: 28-30
One key difference is that, because Vyper does not allow for dynamic arrays, we have limited the number of bids that can be placed by one address to 128 in this example. Bidders who want to make more than this maximum number of bids would need to do so from multiple addresses.
.. index:: purchases
In this example, we have an escrow contract implementing a system for a trustless
transaction between a buyer and a seller. In this system, a seller posts an item
for sale and makes a deposit to the contract of twice the item's value. At
this moment, the contract has a balance of 2 * value. The seller can reclaim
the deposit and close the sale as long as a buyer has not yet made a purchase.
If a buyer is interested in making a purchase, they would make a payment and
submit an equal amount for deposit (totaling 2 * value) into the contract
and locking the contract from further modification. At this moment, the contract
has a balance of 4 * value and the seller would send the item to buyer. Upon
the buyer's receipt of the item, the buyer will mark the item as received in the
contract, thereby returning the buyer's deposit (not payment), releasing the
remaining funds to the seller, and completing the transaction.
There are certainly others ways of designing a secure escrow system with less overhead for both the buyer and seller, but for the purpose of this example, we want to explore one way how an escrow system can be implemented trustlessly.
Let's go!
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :linenos:
This is also a moderately short contract, however a little more complex in logic. Let's break down this contract bit by bit.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 16 :lines: 16-19
Like the other contracts, we begin by declaring our global variables public with
their respective data types. Remember that the public function allows the
variables to be readable by an external caller, but not writeable.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 22 :lines: 22-29
With a @payable decorator on the constructor, the contract creator will be
required to make an initial deposit equal to twice the item's value to
initialize the contract, which will be later returned. This is in addition to
the gas fees needed to deploy the contract on the blockchain, which is not
returned. We assert that the deposit is divisible by 2 to ensure that the
seller deposited a valid amount. The constructor stores the item's value
in the contract variable self.value and saves the contract creator into
self.seller. The contract variable self.unlocked is initialized to
True.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 31 :lines: 31-36
The abort() method is a method only callable by the seller and while the
contract is still unlocked—meaning it is callable only prior to any buyer
making a purchase. As we will see in the purchase() method that when
a buyer calls the purchase() method and sends a valid amount to the contract,
the contract will be locked and the seller will no longer be able to call
abort().
When the seller calls abort() and if the assert statements pass, the
contract will call the selfdestruct() function and refunds the seller and
subsequently destroys the contract.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 38 :lines: 38-45
Like the constructor, the purchase() method has a @payable decorator,
meaning it can be called with a payment. For the buyer to make a valid
purchase, we must first assert that the contract's unlocked property is
True and that the amount sent is equal to twice the item's value. We then
set the buyer to the msg.sender and lock the contract. At this point, the
contract has a balance equal to 4 times the item value and the seller must
send the item to the buyer.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/safe_remote_purchase/safe_remote_purchase.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 47 :lines: 47-61
Finally, upon the buyer's receipt of the item, the buyer can confirm their
receipt by calling the received() method to distribute the funds as
intended—where the seller receives 3/4 of the contract balance and the buyer
receives 1/4.
By calling received(), we begin by checking that the contract is indeed
locked, ensuring that a buyer had previously paid. We also ensure that this
method is only callable by the buyer. If these two assert statements pass,
we refund the buyer their initial deposit and send the seller the remaining
funds. The contract is finally destroyed and the transaction is complete.
Whenever we’re ready, let’s move on to the next example.
.. index:: crowdfund
Now, let's explore a straightforward example for a crowdfunding contract where prospective participants can contribute funds to a campaign. If the total contribution to the campaign reaches or surpasses a predetermined funding goal, the funds will be sent to the beneficiary at the end of the campaign deadline. Participants will be refunded their respective contributions if the total funding does not reach its target goal.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :linenos:
Most of this code should be relatively straightforward after going through our previous examples. Let's dive right in.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 3 :lines: 3-13
Like other examples, we begin by initiating our variables - except this time,
we're not calling them with the public function. Variables initiated this
way are, by default, private.
Note
Unlike the existence of the function public(), there is no equivalent
private() function. Variables simply default to private if initiated
without the public() function.
The funders variable is initiated as a mapping where the key is an address,
and the value is a number representing the contribution of each participant.
The beneficiary will be the final receiver of the funds
once the crowdfunding period is over—as determined by the deadline and
timelimit variables. The goal variable is the target total contribution
of all participants.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 9 :lines: 9-15
Our constructor function takes 3 arguments: the beneficiary's address, the goal
in wei value, and the difference in time from start to finish of the
crowdfunding. We initialize the arguments as contract variables with their
corresponding names. Additionally, a self.deadline is initialized to set
a definitive end time for the crowdfunding period.
Now lets take a look at how a person can participate in the crowdfund.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 17 :lines: 17-23
Once again, we see the @payable decorator on a method, which allows a
person to send some ether along with a call to the method. In this case,
the participate() method accesses the sender's address with msg.sender
and the corresponding amount sent with msg.value. This information is stored
into a struct and then saved into the funders mapping with
self.nextFunderIndex as the key. As more participants are added to the
mapping, self.nextFunderIndex increments appropriately to properly index
each participant.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 25 :lines: 25-31
The finalize() method is used to complete the crowdfunding process. However,
to complete the crowdfunding, the method first checks to see if the crowdfunding
period is over and that the balance has reached/passed its set goal. If those
two conditions pass, the contract calls the selfdestruct() function and
sends the collected funds to the beneficiary.
Note
Notice that we have access to the total amount sent to the contract by
calling self.balance, a variable we never explicitly set. Similar to msg
and block, self.balance is a built-in variable that's available in all
Vyper contracts.
We can finalize the campaign if all goes well, but what happens if the crowdfunding campaign isn't successful? We're going to need a way to refund all the participants.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/crowdfund.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 33 :lines: 33-42
In the refund() method, we first check that the crowdfunding period is
indeed over and that the total collected balance is less than the goal with
the assert statement . If those two conditions pass, we let users get their
funds back using the withdraw pattern.
.. index:: voting, ballot
In this contract, we will implement a system for participants to vote on a list
of proposals. The chairperson of the contract will be able to give each
participant the right to vote, and each participant may choose to vote, or
delegate their vote to another voter. Finally, a winning proposal will be
determined upon calling the winningProposals() method, which iterates through
all the proposals and returns the one with the greatest number of votes.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :linenos:
As we can see, this is the contract of moderate length which we will dissect section by section. Let’s begin!
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 3 :lines: 3-25
The variable voters is initialized as a mapping where the key is
the voter’s public address and the value is a struct describing the
voter’s properties: weight, voted, delegate, and vote, along
with their respective data types.
Similarly, the proposals variable is initialized as a public mapping
with int128 as the key’s datatype and a struct to represent each proposal
with the properties name and vote_count. Like our last example, we can
access any value by key’ing into the mapping with a number just as one would
with an index in an array.
Then, voterCount and chairperson are initialized as public with
their respective datatypes.
Let’s move onto the constructor.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 53 :lines: 53-62
In the constructor, we hard-coded the contract to accept an
array argument of exactly two proposal names of type bytes32 for the contracts
initialization. Because upon initialization, the __init__() method is called
by the contract creator, we have access to the contract creator’s address with
msg.sender and store it in the contract variable self.chairperson. We
also initialize the contract variable self.voter_count to zero to initially
represent the number of votes allowed. This value will be incremented as each
participant in the contract is given the right to vote by the method
giveRightToVote(), which we will explore next. We loop through the two
proposals from the argument and insert them into proposals mapping with
their respective index in the original array as its key.
Now that the initial setup is done, lets take a look at the functionality.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 66 :lines: 66-75
Note
Throughout this contract, we use a pattern where @external functions return data from @internal functions that have the same name prepended with an underscore. This is because Vyper does not allow calls between external functions within the same contract. The internal function handles the logic and allows internal access, while the external function acts as a getter to allow external viewing.
We need a way to control who has the ability to vote. The method
giveRightToVote() is a method callable by only the chairperson by taking
a voter address and granting it the right to vote by incrementing the voter's
weight property. We sequentially check for 3 conditions using assert.
The assert not function will check for falsy boolean values -
in this case, we want to know that the voter has not already voted. To represent
voting power, we will set their weight to 1 and we will keep track of the
total number of voters by incrementing voterCount.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 120 :lines: 120-135
In the method delegate, firstly, we check to see that msg.sender has not
already voted and secondly, that the target delegate and the msg.sender are
not the same. Voters shouldn’t be able to delegate votes to themselves. We,
then, loop through all the voters to determine whether the person delegate to
had further delegated their vote to someone else in order to follow the
chain of delegation. We then mark the msg.sender as having voted if they
delegated their vote. We increment the proposal’s voterCount directly if
the delegate had already voted or increase the delegate’s vote weight
if the delegate has not yet voted.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 139 :lines: 139-151
Now, let’s take a look at the logic inside the vote() method, which is
surprisingly simple. The method takes the key of the proposal in the proposals
mapping as an argument, check that the method caller had not already voted,
sets the voter’s vote property to the proposal key, and increments the
proposals voteCount by the voter’s weight.
With all the basic functionality complete, what’s left is simply returning
the winning proposal. To do this, we have two methods: winningProposal(),
which returns the key of the proposal, and winnerName(), returning the
name of the proposal. Notice the @view decorator on these two methods.
We do this because the two methods only read the blockchain state and do not
modify it. Remember, reading the blockchain state is free; modifying the state
costs gas. By having the @view decorator, we let the EVM know that this
is a read-only function and we benefit by saving gas fees.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 153 :lines: 153-170
The _winningProposal() method returns the key of proposal in the proposals
mapping. We will keep track of greatest number of votes and the winning
proposal with the variables winningVoteCount and winningProposal,
respectively by looping through all the proposals.
winningProposal() is an external function allowing access to _winningProposal().
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/voting/ballot.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 175 :lines: 175-178
And finally, the winnerName() method returns the name of the proposal by
key’ing into the proposals mapping with the return result of the
winningProposal() method.
And there you have it - a voting contract. Currently, many transactions are needed to assign the rights to vote to all participants. As an exercise, can we try to optimize this?
Now that we're familiar with basic contracts. Let's step up the difficulty.
.. index:: stock;company, company stock
This contract is just a tad bit more thorough than the ones we've previously encountered. In this example, we are going to look at a comprehensive contract that manages the holdings of all shares of a company. The contract allows for a person to buy, sell and transfer shares of a company as well as allowing for the company to pay a person in ether. The company, upon initialization of the contract, holds all shares of the company at first but can sell them all.
Let's get started.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :linenos:
Note
Throughout this contract, we use a pattern where @external functions return data from @internal functions that have the same name prepended with an underscore. This is because Vyper does not allow calls between external functions within the same contract. The internal function handles the logic, while the external function acts as a getter to allow viewing.
The contract contains a number of methods that modify the contract state as well as a few 'getter' methods to read it. We first declare several events that the contract logs. We then declare our global variables, followed by function definitions.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 3 :lines: 3-27
We initiate the company variable to be of type address that's public.
The totalShares variable is of type uint256, which in this case
represents the total available shares of the company. The price variable
represents the wei value of a share and holdings is a mapping that maps an
address to the number of shares the address owns.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 29 :lines: 29-40
In the constructor, we set up the contract to check for valid inputs during
the initialization of the contract via the two assert statements. If the
inputs are valid, the contract variables are set accordingly and the
company's address is initialized to hold all shares of the company in the
holdings mapping.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 42 :lines: 42-46
We will be seeing a few @view decorators in this contract—which is
used to decorate methods that simply read the contract state or return a simple
calculation on the contract state without modifying it. Remember, reading the
blockchain is free, writing on it is not. Since Vyper is a statically typed
language, we see an arrow following the definition of the _stockAvailable()
method, which simply represents the data type which the function is expected
to return. In the method, we simply key into self.holdings with the
company's address and check it's holdings. Because _stockAvailable() is an
internal method, we also include the stockAvailable() method to allow
external access.
Now, lets take a look at a method that lets a person buy stock from the company's holding.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 51 :lines: 51-64
The buyStock() method is a @payable method which takes an amount of
ether sent and calculates the buyOrder (the stock value equivalence at
the time of call). The number of shares is deducted from the company's holdings
and transferred to the sender's in the holdings mapping.
Now that people can buy shares, how do we check someone's holdings?
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 66 :lines: 66-71
The _getHolding() is another @view method that takes an address
and returns its corresponding stock holdings by keying into self.holdings.
Again, an external function getHolding() is included to allow access.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 72 :lines: 72-76
To check the ether balance of the company, we can simply call the getter method
cash().
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 78 :lines: 78-95
To sell a stock, we have the sellStock() method which takes a number of
stocks a person wishes to sell, and sends the equivalent value in ether to the
seller's address. We first assert that the number of stocks the person
wishes to sell is a value greater than 0. We also assert to see that
the user can only sell as much as the user owns and that the company has enough
ether to complete the sale. If all conditions are met, the holdings are deducted
from the seller and given to the company. The ethers are then sent to the seller.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 97 :lines: 97-110
A stockholder can also transfer their stock to another stockholder with the
transferStock() method. The method takes a receiver address and the number
of shares to send. It first asserts that the amount being sent is greater
than 0 and asserts whether the sender has enough stocks to send. If
both conditions are satisfied, the transfer is made.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 112 :lines: 112-124
The company is also allowed to pay out an amount in ether to an address by
calling the payBill() method. This method should only be callable by the
company and thus first checks whether the method caller's address matches that
of the company. Another important condition to check is that the company has
enough funds to pay the amount. If both conditions satisfy, the contract
sends its ether to an address.
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 126 :lines: 126-130
We can also check how much the company has raised by multiplying the number of
shares the company has sold and the price of each share. Internally, we get
this value by calling the _debt() method. Externally it is accessed via debt().
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/stock/company.vy :language: python :lineno-start: 132 :lines: 132-138
Finally, in this worth() method, we can check the worth of a company by
subtracting its debt from its ether balance.
This contract has been the most thorough example so far in terms of its functionality and features. Yet despite the thoroughness of such a contract, the logic remained simple. Hopefully, by now, the Vyper language has convinced you of its capabilities and readability in writing smart contracts.