Switch to ethers.js

[andrewgordstewart]

web3 contracts do not work with smart contract functions that return or accept structs.

They are also sometimes unpleasant to work with.

• for example:

web3 [contracts] silently discards arguments it doesn't recognise the type of, but will complain if it gets the wrong number of arguments

• or: web3 doesn't validate inputs, causing

3 different representations [of the same private key] create 3 valid, different signed transactions, all thanks to web3 not validating it's inputs

• or: Calling structs incorrectly decodes non-32-byte data

Consider switching to ethers.js, which supports contracts that use the ABIEncoderV2, and is (hopefully) nicer to work with.

Problems:

• P1: Truffle contracts are a wrapper around web3, so we couldn't use truffle contracts to test ABIEncoderV2 smart contracts.

[andrewgordstewart]

P1 Solutions

S1

If we continue to use truffle for testing, we would need to:

1. take the truffle contract that truffle test deploys on our behalf
2. fetch its address, abi, and deployed bytecode. hope that they're correct.
3. create an ethers.js provider, using the web3 provider that truffle test creates for us
4. instantiate an ethers.js contract using the abi, address and bytecode from step 2, connected to the ethers.js provider created in step 3

S2

We could alternatively switch to testing directly with mocha.

S3

We could use an alternative testing framework, such as waffle, which supports ethers.js contracts.

• We'd need to make sure [insert framework] is mature enough to be worth switching to.