Enhance gas price

[odyslam]

Description

• Make gas prices more human friendly
• Show the user both the market price and the provider's price for gas
• Color for the provider's price is adjusted based on market price, so the user can visually see the difference.

possible improvements

• Take arguments to print only provider or only market view
• Take arguments to export prices in a manner that can be consumed by other commands (e.g seth estimate to show size + deployment cost)

Very open to suggestions and feedback :)

[d-xo]

I think this breaks both seth call and seth mktx which both use seth gas-price internally. It will also break any existing scripts that rely on the current output of seth gas-price.

I'm probably OK with breaking scripts that rely on seth gas-price since using gasnow data is a nice UX improvement, but we definately need to:

• introduce some machine readable options into the output (maybe smth like: seth gas-price rapid, seth gas-price fast, seth gas-price standard, seth gas-price slow, seth gas-price rpc?). It might also be nice to introduce some SETH_TX_SPEED variable or similar that can be used to set a default?
• fix the usages of seth gas-price in the existing codebase to avoid any regressions
• add some automated tests covering the new behaviour

[odyslam]

Thanks for the thorough response @d-xo. My main intention was to start a discussion, so I think that this is great.

For some reason, I didn't find any uses for the command. Weird.

These are the TODOs as I see them:

• [ ] Introduce different commands that are machine-readable. For this, I prefer to concatenate in 2 commands that instead of returning a value, they define an env variable. market and provider. The reason being that a curl will bring the entire market view. Env variable: SETH_TX_FAST_GAS, etc.
• [ ] Fix use of seth gas-price in existing
• [ ] Add automated tests

What are you thinking about surfacing the following functionality:

As a user I want to know how much it will cost me to deploy my smart contract

This is a combination of seth estimate and seth gas-price. I have implemented it in this repo as an extension of @gakonst deployment script. It could be part of dapp test or another command.

[d-xo]

For this, I prefer to concatenate in 2 commands that instead of returning a value, they define an env variable. market and provider. The reason being that a curl will bring the entire market view. Env variable: SETH_TX_FAST_GAS, etc.

I'm not sure I understand, can you provide some concrete examples.

What are you thinking about surfacing the following functionality:

As a user I want to know how much it will cost me to deploy my smart contract

This is a combination of seth estimate and seth gas-price. I have implemented it in this repo as an extension of @gakonst deployment script. It could be part of dapp test or another command.

I think this is a nice idea, but I think it's a little too specific to belong in core dapp. I think it makes more sense as a seperate tool.

[odyslam]

I'm not sure I understand, can you provide some concrete examples.

• seth gas-price market: Populate $ETH_TX_GAS_FAST, $ETH_TX_GAS_RAPID, etc
• seth gas-price provider: Populate $ETH_TX_GAS_PROVIDER

I think this is a nice idea, but I think it's a little to specific to belong in core dapp. I think it makes more sense as a separate tool.

Is it too specific? I mean, if you are deploying a smart contract, you do want to know when it costs 1 ETH and when 3 ETH to deploy it, right? It could even be automated with a chron job so that it's deployed at the gas-price that you want.

At least, that was how I approached it. Since I am super new, I am very curious to see how teams approach this issue, or perhaps they don't care about deployment cost? Making this an issue for the hobbyist, but not the professional in a team.

[d-xo]

• seth gas-price market: Populate $ETH_TX_GAS_FAST, $ETH_TX_GAS_RAPID, etc
• seth gas-price provider: Populate $ETH_TX_GAS_PROVIDER

I think this feels a little stateful and somewhat hard to compose. I would prefer keeping one command and allowing users to specify which output they want (e.g. seth gas-price rapid).

Is it too specific? I mean, if you are deploying a smart contract, you do want to know when it costs 1 ETH and when 3 ETH to deploy it, right? It could even be automated with a chron job so that it's deployed at the gas-price that you want.

At least, that was how I approached it. Since I am super new, I am very curious to see how teams approach this issue, or perhaps they don't care about deployment cost? Making this an issue for the hobbyist, but not the professional in a team.

I think you['ve changed my mind. A dapp create --estimate-cost or similar would be pretty nice actually.

[odyslam]

I highly respect those who can change their mind. I hope it's as useful as I think it will be.

[transmissions11]

oof GasNow is shutting down on October 18th so need to find another gas price api

[odyslam]

Yeah, I need to get around to implementing this. Perhaps: https://www.blocknative.com/

[transmissions11]

how about ethgasstation? https://ethgasstation.info/api/ethgasAPI.json

says they require an API key but works fine for me without

[mds1]

+1 for blocknative's gas estimator, they're always great in my experience

[odyslam]

Okay, I think I i will implement this the following days. It seems like an easy win.

I have no experience with either operator. What do you think is best? From a UX standpoint, ethgas is better because the user doesn't have to get a personal API key.

cc @mds1 @transmissions11 @d-xo

[transmissions11]

Okay, I think I i will implement this the following days. It seems like an easy win.

I have no experience with either operator. What do you think is best? From a UX standpoint, ethgas is better because the user doesn't have to get a personal API key.

i def think we should find a free endpoint if possible— tho not sure which we can rely on

@sambacha suggested using api.txprice.com which he says is a free proxy they run for blocknative enterprise (https://github.com/gakonst/dapptools-template/pull/24)

[mds1]

Agreed on a free one, good point about the blocknative API key. Just tested/confirmed that https://api.txprice.com/ returns the same data as blocknative, so that seems to be a great option and will personally that will be my default

A good overview of other options can be found at https://github.com/sambacha/gas-reporting, also courtesy of @sambacha

[gakonst]

Yeah +1 on free option