This is the accompanying code for the article "An Efficient Unidirectional Micropayment Channel on Ethereum". It consists of:
- Four Solidity contracts:
EthWord
,Pay50
,PayMerkle
,PayMerkleExtension
. - Helper scripts in order to test
PayMerkle
contract.
Assume that Alice runs an online service for which she accepts (Ether
) payments on a micro-level (i.e., a very low fraction of
Ether
that costs less than one dollar). Bob is interested in that service and he wants to utilize it.
The following programs are required to test this senario:
Suppose that Bob estimates the number of maximum payments he is willing to make is 4096
with a minimum unit of payments of 1 Wei
. He create a Merkle Tree with number of leaves equal to channelCapacity = 4096
by executing the following code on his Nodejs console.
const { MerkleTree } = require('../helpers/merkletree.js');
const Web3 = require('web3');
const { keccak256, bufferToHex } = require('ethereumjs-util');
const crypto = require('crypto');
const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://127.0.0.1:8545'));
//Create MerkleTree
const channelCapacity = 4096;
const leaves =[];
const seed = crypto.randomBytes(256);
let rn = keccak256(seed);
for(i = channelCapacity; i > 0; i--){
let a = web3.eth.abi.encodeParameter('uint256',web3.utils.toWei(`${i}`, "wei"));
let b = bufferToHex(rn);
let ab = a b.slice(2);
leaves.unshift(ab);//push at the beginning of the array
rn = keccak256(rn);
}
const merkleTree = new MerkleTree(leaves);
const treeRoot = merkleTree.getHexRoot();
console.log("seed : " bufferToHex(seed));
console.log("Tree Root : " treeRoot);
Bob deploys PayMerkle
smart contract on Ethereum to act as a trusted third party. The mart contract constructor parameters are:
- Alice's address on Ethereum.
- A timeout value before the channel is closed.
- The root of the Merkle tree
treeRoot
.
Also, Bob has to send the amount of 4096 Wei
to the smart contract to be held in escrow and pay Alice when she submits a valid Merkle proof.
Alice and Bob are performing transactions off-chain. Every time Bob wants to utilize Alice's service, he sends her a new Merkle proof proof
for an amount of i
of Wei
. To obtain the Merkle proof, he executes the following code on his previously opened Nodejs console:
const claimedLeaf = leaves[i - 1];
const claimedValue = claimedLeaf.slice(0,66);
const randomValue = '0x' claimedLeaf.slice(66);
const proof = merkleTree.getHexProof(claimedLeaf);
Then, Bob sends the values of claimedValue, randomValue, proof
to Alice. From her side, she verifies that claimedValue||randomValue
is a part of the Merkle tree depolyed in the smart contract by calls VerifyMerkleProof
function on her Nodejs console, and based on the output she decides to accept or reject.
const { keccak256, bufferToHex } = require('ethereumjs-util');
function VerifyMerkleProof(_claimedValue, _randomValue, _proof, _treeRoot) {
let node = bufferToHex(keccak256(_claimedValue _randomValue.slice(2)));
for (i = 0; i < _proof.length; i ) {
let proofElement = _proof[i];
if (node < proofElement)
node = bufferToHex(keccak256(node proofElement.slice(2)));
else
node = bufferToHex(keccak256(proofElement node.slice(2)));
}
if (node == treeRoot)
return true;
else
return false;
}
console.log(VerifyMerkleProof(claimedValue, randomValue, proof, treeRoot))
Once, Alice and Bob agree that there is no more transactions going between them, Alice invokes the CloseChannel
function on PayMerkle
smart contract by sending the latest values of claimedValue, randomValue, proof
(the proof for largest amount) to the smart contract which will verify it and release the payment to Alice.