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MetaMask / metamask-extension

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Add Web3 1.0 support #2350

Closed danfinlay closed 6 years ago

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

Appears to include:

vs77bb commented 6 years ago

Hi @choochootrain - many moons ago (3 weeks, to be exact) you let this go because you were swamped. Any interest in picking it back up at this time?

gitcoinbot commented 6 years ago

Work has been started on the 0.3 ETH (230.34 USD) funding by:

  1. @pablasso

    Please work together and coordinate delivery of the issue scope. Gitcoin doesn't know enough about everyones skillsets / free time to say who should work on what, but we trust that the community is smart and well-intentioned enough to work together. As a general rule; if you start work first, youll be at the top of the above list ^^, and should have 'dibs' as long as you follow through.

    On the above list? Please leave a comment to let the funder (@owocki) and the other parties involved what you're working, with respect to this issue and your plans to resolve it. If you don't leave a comment, the funder may expire your submission at their discretion.

pablasso commented 6 years ago

@owocki there's a lot of guidance already here by @benjamincburns, I think I can follow up and complete this issue. I'll ping you back when I have some progress.

owocki commented 6 years ago

@pablasso sounds good

ghost commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay and others: could one say that web3 is one of the most important libraries that MetaMask uses? Possibly the top-most important one?

@kumavis , could you please place this info: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-353437246 into the 1st comment? In essence, everything important that comes up shoudld be moved into the 1st message (and deleted from comments, to shrink down discussion size).

Thus whoever hits on the issue gets kind of immediately the most important info & status. For example me: I would have been able to assess: can I pick this up if @pablasso is drinking margaritas in Hawaii?

(ethics level discussion in this issue... will read it when i need to relax! )

pablasso commented 6 years ago

I don't think we should delete comments as they give you a good sense of where the conversation was heading and why decisions where taken. Update the top comment with the latest info is fine, although I'm not sure if this is a good use of time for the maintainers while we can just invest more time reading the threads — big threads like these are the exception not the rule.

I'm not drinking margaritas in Hawaii (yet!), this was harder than expected and I don't yet have progress for a PR. I'm only dedicated some time on the weekends, hopefully I have something in the next one.

However if anyone else has progress here, I don't have a problem with you taking on this.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@pablasso, all fine then. We all continue to go fishing for relevant info (sometimes missing this way even a bug-fix which was posted within a critical issue).

I do not want to take this over (for now). I just wanted that @danfinlay & @kumavis realize that this issue should possibly be labled "highest priority", and not "good first issue".

But most importantly I just wanted an answer to this question:

could one say that web3 is one of the most important libraries that MetaMask uses? Possibly the top-most important one?

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

could one say that web3 is one of the most important libraries that MetaMask uses? Possibly the top-most important one?

I don't think this is the case anymore. Web3 is now basically a convenience layer on top of the provider API. Eventually, the Provider API will be injected probably without web3 at all (Mist has already deprecated the web3 global).

For example, the Ethereum provider can be used to initialize other convenience libraries, like my favorite, ethjs.

Web3 1.0 requires a new type of provider (which relies on websockets, or server-sent events), which is why it requires special rework to make compatible.

Since other alternatives work fine, I don't consider this a top priority at all. We have issues where there is actual security issues involved (privacy, hardware support, storage resilience), and those are much higher priority to me than being compatible with the latest breaking version of web3.

I'll remove the good-first-issue tag.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay , ok then, taking in account what you wrote, and this here:

As Mist 0.9.0 release is approaching, we'd like to inform that in the near future, from 0.9.0 onwards it won't inject web3 object by default on Dapps. This is a measure to keep Dapps stable on the long run as ethereum ecosystem evolves. We'll provide a developer preview version, so Dapp developers will have time to update their Dapps accordingly.

The web3.currentProvider object will still remain for a period of time for backwards compatibility and a new provider object will be introduced.

I looks like the task should be:

(what we discuss here should be visible/documented immediately, thus interested contributors can contribute faster. This relates to #3302)

cmditch commented 6 years ago

Hey @pablasso and @owocki thanks for working/funding this issue! This will finally make elm-web3 compatible with metamask.

ghost commented 6 years ago

I understand that it is one thing what MetaMask uses internally, and another thing what the developers of applications use/need.

So it (web3) could have low priority for the MetaMask team (e.g. could be removed, to alight efforts with Ethereum main projects), but it could have high priority for users (although I feel that they should adjust to what the Ethereum mother projects use, too).

I would really like to understand this (@cmditch / @danfinlay ) ?

cmditch commented 6 years ago

@lazaridiscom

MetaMask is understandably very busy. web3-1.0.js is also still in beta. Luckily the repo is open source, and anyone can make a PR to help add the needed features. Better still, there's a GitCoin bounty attached to helped incentivize such work. Ultimately nothing but ourselves is stopping this from getting done.

Also, forgive me, having a bit of trouble understanding what you're trying to understand.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@cmditch , nothing to forgive, I have to apologize for not expressing this clearly. I try to rephrase this:

MetaMask Requirements

MetaMask AddOn:

and now the question:

If this still does not make sense, then I simply have not understood all this.

(@cmditch , looked at your repo, looks nice)

GrandSchtroumpf commented 6 years ago

Hey guys, I'm following this thread since the beginning and I don't see the end of it ... The aim was to get compatible with web3 1.0 than relies on websocket for events and some subsciptions.

The facts are :

-> Many projects are technologically bounded to Web3 AND their clients use MetaMask. SO if they use many events on their smart contracts, they cannot update to web3 1.0.

So I don't know for a general point of view if MetaMask "should ( ? ) or must ( ? ) provide/expose web3 functionality to Application Developers?", but I know that many projects are waiting for websocket support for some times now. I don't have enough knowledge of how the provider-engine works internally to resolve this issue, but I think that this thread must be only used to solve this problem and should not be used for general thinking (ethical questions about bounties or what metamask should or must be).

My point here is to say that they are real projects relying on the implementation.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@GrandSchtroumpf , all fine, the high-priority label is there, yet one question remains for me:

If web3 is so super as you describe, then why has Mist dropped it?

GrandSchtroumpf commented 6 years ago

Thanks for the label. @lazaridiscom I cannot speak for Mist. But I guess some people like ethjs better so there is no reason to use web3 then...

alexvandesande commented 6 years ago

@lazaridiscom what are you talking about? Mist did not drop web3 or has any plans of doing so.

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

Sorry @alexvandesande, I think he was going off my earlier citation where the Mist changelog announced web3's deprecation.

We have continued injecting it ourselves, but weren't sure if you had deprecated yet or not.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@alexvandesande

from: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases/tag/v0.9.0

NOTE FOR DAPP DEVELOPERS!

From this version on Mist will not ship its own web3.js instance anymore. We only provide for now web3.currentProvider so you can connect to ethereum. In the future, we will provide a special ethereum object with a default provider.

Also this web3.currentProvider will not allow sync calls anymore, as it is already the case in MetaMask (and it's bad practice in general). So make sure to use the async ones e.g. web3.eth.accounts -> web3.eth.getAccounts(function(){...})

from: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases/tag/v0.8.10

Deprecation notice

As Mist 0.9.0 release is approaching, we'd like to inform that in the near future, from 0.9.0 onwards it won't inject web3 object by default on Dapps. This is a measure to keep Dapps stable on the long run as ethereum ecosystem evolves. We'll provide a developer preview version, so Dapp developers will have time to update their Dapps accordingly.

The web3.currentProvider object will still remain for a period of time for backwards compatibility and a new provider object will be introduced.

amitaymolko commented 6 years ago

Hey guys, Any updates/progress? @pablasso are you working on this?

@benjamincburns Drizzle needs this quick :(

bgits commented 6 years ago

Is there a WIP branch or repo for this issue? Seems like multiple people started work on this, but it's unclear where that code lives.

owocki commented 6 years ago

hi all. i just killed the bounty for this issue for some gitcoin-internal migration reasons but wanted to let you know that, regardless of the issue description on gitcoin.co.. im good to pay out this bounty when the time is right. just @ me back then!

guix77 commented 6 years ago

Really looking forward for this

alexvandesande commented 6 years ago

@lazaridiscom @danfinlay it just means that we won't be injecting it by default, but using a web provider to allow the apps themselves choose their own library, given that more than one exists. It's still our library of choice and we use it ourselves, just giving users more options.

chapati23 commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay @lazaridiscom Would raising the bounty for this issue help move it forward quicker? If yes, we at Brickblock would be happy to throw some ETH into the hat.

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

@chapati23

If the core team completes this feature, we’ll reject all bounties for it, since we’re already salaried, but a bounty could encourage an external community member to try to implement this sooner.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@alexvandesande , thank yo for the info. You should possibly clarify this in your documentation, because the announcement reads like "Deprecated". Possibly the by default in won't inject web3 object by default implies that devs can still opt to inject/use it. But this has quite a reduced visibility (at least it had for me).

@chapati23 raising the bounty should help, but i've the feeling that providing a concise task-description will help even more!

@danfinlay , @kumavis - I really think its time to create a task description, with the minimum estimated steps needed to fulfill this.

Would possibly be enough to

Could(!) look like this (to invite people to take a look at this issue, to possibly do one subtask)

Task

MetaMask should be compatible with web3 1.0. This quick overview provides the estimated necessary steps:

Solution Path A (by kumvaris)

source: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-353437246

Issue: Add websocket subprovider - MetaMask/provider-engine/issues/189

Comments by benjamincburns: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-354912008

Solution Path B (by benjamincburns)

info from end of: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-374717425 (easier to implement, but without the full benefits of websockets. Would still enable use of web3 1.0)

Base work:

Solution Path C

This would be my process/path:

Solution Path D (by yourself)

owocki commented 6 years ago

two notes:

  1. it might make sense to move the issue scope over to a new, clean, issue.
  2. though i broadly defer to the metamask team on their specific policy, i disagree that it's on the metamask team to think through the solution path for the bounty hunters. if they are going to think through the implementation for you, then they might as well just do it themselves. you could generate a pretty plausible implementation path by just looking at whats changed in web3.js 1.0 and grepping the metamask codebase for what needs to be updated & reworked.
GrandSchtroumpf commented 6 years ago

@owocki I think we are beyond this kind of consideration. This is a core feature for many Dapps that rely on web3 1.0.0 and the bounty is so small (0.3Eth) that nobody will take the time needed to solve this issue. I think that the real problem is that few people know in depth web3-provider-engine and among them fewer have the time to work on it. A not-so-good dapp developer can earn 0.3Eth per hour of work on freelance mission, why would anyone spend some time to solve this problem except if he is facing it in his job ? Therefore if someone is going to solve this issue, it is absolutely not for the bounty ! I, for example, would be glad to work on that, but my knowledge of this project is too low for that. So I think that if the metamask team hasn't the time to work on that issue, we should at least know what to do to solve it ourselves.

owocki commented 6 years ago

the bounty is so small (0.3Eth) that nobody will take the time needed to solve this issue.

this issue was funded back when ETH was 2x the price it is now.

nonetheless, your point about the amount of funding is still valid. i am happy to increase the funding for the issue if @danfinlay and @kumavis want to give it another go (perhaps on another ticket)

ghost commented 6 years ago

we should at least know what to do to solve it ourselves.

@GrandSchtroumpf , the solution-paths are already given, mostly in comments within this issue. I've update my comment above and collected quickly the relevant info of kumvaris path (and added a personal one) : https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-374070412

ghost commented 6 years ago

For the case anyone wants to make a tiny step: #3618

guix77 commented 6 years ago

I totally agree that the bounty is very small. We're talking about a major door into the Ethereum world, here, not a super fancy awesome useless feature.

Furthermore, maybe no one cares because it's clear that the injection of Metamask is deprecated, because changing its default version would break most dApps and because we can always use currentProvider and replace the whole injected Web3.JS

window.web3 = new Web3(window.web3.currentProvider);

GrandSchtroumpf commented 6 years ago

@lazaridiscom web3 uses this version of websocket when websocket is not available on the window or if we are on a server: https://github.com/frozeman/WebSocket-Node Is it ok to use this module in the providerFromEngine to handle server-push and send ?

ryan-rowland commented 6 years ago

The wheels have been spinning on this one for months... It seems like the common pattern is:

We have a general idea of the steps that need to be taken to get this task knocked out. Can we get a rough consensus on the steps required, and then split those sub-tasks out into their own tasks so this can be tackled in a more gradual and granular fashion?

ghost commented 6 years ago

@GrandSchtroumpf - In this issue here, I just apply the standard-procedure in an abstract manner. With the quite low amount of domain-knowledge I have, I would answer you: yes. But @kumavis and others should know better.

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

Sorry for the low bounty, and the low response rate. The core team has been very busy with other issues at the moment, and we've always planned to do this eventually, and we might just do it ourselves soon. The community doesn't need to feel responsible for completing this.

That said, since this issue clearly needs a re-focusing, I will now write a brief summary of what this issue involves.

The Current State of MetaMask's Provider

MetaMask's most popular open source component to date has by far been web3-provider-engine. This express inspired middleware architecture allowed @kumavis to compose MetaMask's custom provider logic into a stack of "subproviders" that handle different requests, or portions of requests, and then either pass the mutated request down the stack, or reply directly.

This engine was designed for the original Ethereum JSON RPC spec. Since then, there has also emerged a websocket API that includes subscriptions called the RPC Pub Sub API. This new API allowed push subscriptions, and Web3 1.0 to exist.

Currently, MetaMask still uses polling & HTTP to get all of its data, and so the most obvious way to add Web3 1.0 support is to allow us to move onto a websocket based infrastructure.

A Problem With That

Over time, it has become increasingly clear that some of the ethereum-opinionated aspects of provider-engine were actually getting in the way of creating a good provider, and things were being hacked on top of it.

For example, our cache-subprovider needs block awareness to know when to clear its cache, and so block tracking was built into provider-engine, and bit by bit, these pieces of opinionated architecture has made provider-engine a bit harder to work with.

Furthermore, since provider-engine was never designed for handling subscriptions, since it's a middleware for responding to requests, it has no natural way of representing a websocket connection.

The Websocket Solution

Since much of the difficulty of adding a new connection type is that provider-engine encompasses all the middleware, and makes them hard to interact with, we're moving MetaMask over to json-rpc-engine. You'll see us use it a few places in MetaMask instead of provider-engine. This is basically the same general product as provider-engine, except with all the ethereum-opinionated aspects torn out, so they can more easily be accessed by external consumers, and so some types of features (like subscriptions) can more easily be added.

By removing the specialized logic from the engine itself, that kind of wiring can be left to the subproviders themselves. For example, the new arrangement might look a little more manual, but it allows much more diversity in subproviders (pseudocode below):

var engine = new JsonRpcEngine()

var blockTracker = new BlockTrackerSubprovider()
var cache = new CacheSubprovider({ blockTracker })

engine.add(blockTracker)
engine.add(cache)

engine.start()

Moving to json-rpc-engine means every subprovider in the zero subprovider needs to be re-written or modified for json-rpc-engine, so its functionality can be swapped in place. Many of these subproviders have already been written here: https://github.com/MetaMask/eth-json-rpc-middleware

In particular, the final subprovider that will need to be written for this issue is the websocket subprovider. Once we have this all ready, we'll probably need to compose the zero provider which is currently only imported, because only by composing the subproviders will we have access to the block-tracker's events. Or we come up with a way of accessing specific subproviders from the parent controller.

Anyways, this proposal is hardly trivial, as provider-engine is basically the heart of MetaMask, and so this is something like MetaMask heart surgery. We've already seen some regressions related to moving provider-engine over to json-rpc-engine, and so this needs to be done slowly and carefully, and json-rpc-engine needs to get really solid really fast.

An MVP Solution

While everything above has been accurate and true, there is a way we can provide web3 1.0 support a bit faster, but without the full performance benefits of websockets.

This is to polyfill the subscription API, the way Ben Burns did here already.

If that subprovider got a little polish and QA, it's possible it would be ready to go very soon, and so someone looking for the shortest path to letting their dapp use Web3 1.0 might just take that on, and I think it would still win the bounty for this issue, since this issue is really about web3 1.0 support, not websockets themselves.

The subscription data event would still need to be exposed in some way, and maybe a new module could be used to wrap provider-enigne to expand its API to include the full PUB SUB API. Figuring out those details would still be part of this "MVP".

owocki commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay thanks for the thoughtful re-focusing comment. if its okay to you ill move your latest comment over to a new github issue and issue a new bounty for the MVP scope.

ghost commented 6 years ago

Updated Summary: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/2350#issuecomment-374070412

owocki commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay here is a new issue: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/3639

i move we

  1. close down this issue
  2. put a bounty of 1 ETH on that issue.

does that sound good to the group?

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

Either that one or this one, @owocki.

I will do more work to clean up this story tomorrow. I might close this thread in favor of these new, cleaner issues with links to important comments.

danfinlay commented 6 years ago

To help clarify what would be involved in adding websocket support, I've enhanced the issue description here:

https://github.com/MetaMask/provider-engine/issues/189

owocki commented 6 years ago

just bountied https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/3642 with 1 ETH

ghost commented 6 years ago

I might close this thread

@danfinlay , yeah, before it reaches 100 comments!

kyriediculous commented 6 years ago

I'm sad that the core team doesn't see this as a major issue :(

ghost commented 6 years ago

Well, @kyriediculous, don't be sad. This has quite a priority and there is ongoing work, see e.g. #3642

ghost commented 6 years ago

@danfinlay , as this issue has follow-up's set, you could lock it.

ghost commented 6 years ago

@ all

It looks that there is a first working draft of web3 1.0 support for testing available, see:

https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/3642#issuecomment-379921721