# Writing a Contract on Paloma

A smart contract is logic whose terms are expressed as a computer program and has a state persisted on the blockchain. Smart contracts can automatically carry out its terms and conditions with total transparency and no counter-party risk.

Smart contracts on Paloma are written in Rust, using the CosmWasm framework.

TIP

To better understand the building blocks of the smart contract you will build in this tutorial, view the complete contract (opens new window).

CW20 Tokens

According to the official documentation (opens new window)

CW20 is a specification for fungible tokens based on CosmWasm. The name and design is loosely based on Ethereum's ERC20 standard, but many changes have been made. The types in here can be imported by contracts that wish to implement this spec, or by contracts that call to any standard cw20 contract.

A smart contract can be considered an instance of a singleton object whose internal state is persisted on the blockchain. Users can trigger state changes through sending it JSON messages, and users can also query its state through sending a request formatted as a JSON message. These messages are different than Paloma blockchain messages such as MsgSend and MsgExecuteContract.

As a smart contract writer, your job is to define 3 functions that define your smart contract's interface:

instantiate(): a constructor which is called during contract instantiation to provide initial state
execute(): gets called when a user wants to invoke a method on the smart contract
query(): gets called when a user wants to get data out of a smart contract

In this section, you will define your expected messages alongside their implementation.

# Start with a template

In your working directory, quickly launch your smart contract with the recommended folder structure and build options by running the following commands:

cargo generate --git https://github.com/CosmWasm/cw-template.git --branch 0.16 --name my-first-contract
cd my-first-contract

This helps get you started by providing the basic boilerplate and structure for a smart contract. You'll find in the src/lib.rs file that the standard CosmWasm entrypoints instantiate(), execute(), and query() are properly exposed and hooked up.

# Contract state

The starting template has the basic following state:

a singleton struct State containing:
- a 32-bit integer count
- a Paloma address owner

// src/state.rs
use schemars::JsonSchema;
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

use cosmwasm_std::Addr;
use cw_storage_plus::Item;

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, JsonSchema)]
pub struct State {
    pub count: i32,
    pub owner: Addr,
}

pub const STATE: Item<State> = Item::new("state");

Paloma smart contracts have the ability to keep persistent state through Paloma's native LevelDB, a bytes-based key-value store. As such, any data you wish to persist should be assigned a unique key at which the data can be indexed and later retrieved. The singleton in the example above is assigned the key config (in bytes).

Data can only be persisted as raw bytes, so any notion of structure or data type must be expressed as a pair of serializing and deserializing functions. For instance, objects must be stored as bytes, so you must supply both the function that encodes the object into bytes to save it on the blockchain, as well as the function that decodes the bytes back into data types that your contract logic can understand. The choice of byte representation is up to you, so long as it provides a clean, bi-directional mapping.

Fortunately, the CosmWasm team have provided utility crates such as cosmwasm_storage (opens new window), which provides convenient high-level abstractions for data containers such as a "singleton" and "bucket", which automatically provide serialization and deserialization for commonly-used types such as structs and Rust numbers.

Notice how the State struct holds both count and owner. In addition, the derive attribute is applied to auto-implement some useful traits:

Serialize: provides serialization
Deserialize: provides deserialization
Clone: makes the struct copyable
Debug: enables the struct to be printed to string
PartialEq: provides equality comparison
JsonSchema: auto-generates a JSON schema

Addr, refers to a human-readable Paloma address prefixed with Paloma.... Its counterpart is the CanonicalAddr, which refers to a Paloma address's native decoded Bech32 form in bytes.

# InstantiateMsg

The InstantiateMsg is provided when a user creates a contract on the blockchain through a MsgInstantiateContract. This provides the contract with its configuration as well as its initial state.

On the Paloma blockchain, the uploading of a contract's code and the instantiation of a contract are regarded as separate events, unlike on Ethereum. This is to allow a small set of vetted contract archetypes to exist as multiple instances sharing the same base code but configured with different parameters (imagine one canonical ERC20, and multiple tokens that use its code).

# Example

For your contract, you will expect a contract creator to supply the initial state in a JSON message:

{
  "count": 100
}

# Message Definition

// src/msg.rs

use schemars::JsonSchema;
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, JsonSchema)]
pub struct InstantiateMsg {
    pub count: i32,
}

# Logic

Here you will define your first entry-point, the instantiate(), or where the contract is instantiated and passed its InstantiateMsg. Extract the count from the message and set up your initial state, where:

count is assigned the count from the message
owner is assigned to the sender of the MsgInstantiateContract

// src/contract.rs
#[cfg_attr(not(feature = "library"), entry_point)]
pub fn instantiate(
    deps: DepsMut,
    _env: Env,
    info: MessageInfo,
    msg: InstantiateMsg,
) -> Result<Response, ContractError> {
    let state = State {
        count: msg.count,
        owner: info.sender.clone(),
    };
    set_contract_version(deps.storage, CONTRACT_NAME, CONTRACT_VERSION)?;
    STATE.save(deps.storage, &state)?;

    Ok(Response::new()
        .add_attribute("method", "instantiate")
        .add_attribute("owner", info.sender)
        .add_attribute("count", msg.count.to_string()))
}

# ExecuteMsg

The ExecuteMsg is a JSON message passed to the execute() function through a MsgExecuteContract. Unlike the InstantiateMsg, the ExecuteMsg can exist as several different types of messages, to account for the different types of functions that a smart contract can expose to a user. The execute() function demultiplexes these different types of messages to its appropriate message handler logic.

# Example

# Increment

Any user can increment the current count by 1.

{
  "increment": {}
}

# Reset

Only the owner can reset the count to a specific number.

{
  "reset": {
    "count": 5
  }
}

# Message Definition

As for your ExecuteMsg, you will use an enum to multiplex over the different types of messages that your contract can understand. The serde attribute rewrites your attribute keys in snake case and lower case, so you'll have increment and reset instead of Increment and Reset when serializing and deserializing across JSON.

// src/msg.rs

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, JsonSchema)]
#[serde(rename_all = "snake_case")]
pub enum ExecuteMsg {
    Increment {},
    Reset { count: i32 },
}

# Logic

// src/contract.rs

#[cfg_attr(not(feature = "library"), entry_point)]
pub fn execute(
    deps: DepsMut,
    _env: Env,
    info: MessageInfo,
    msg: ExecuteMsg,
) -> Result<Response, ContractError> {
    match msg {
        ExecuteMsg::Increment {} => try_increment(deps),
        ExecuteMsg::Reset { count } => try_reset(deps, info, count),
    }
}

This is your execute() method, which uses Rust's pattern matching to route the received ExecuteMsg to the appropriate handling logic, either dispatching a try_increment() or a try_reset() call depending on the message received.

pub fn try_increment(deps: DepsMut) -> Result<Response, ContractError> {
    STATE.update(deps.storage, |mut state| -> Result<_, ContractError> {
        state.count += 1;
        Ok(state)
    })?;

    Ok(Response::new().add_attribute("method", "try_increment"))
}

It is quite straightforward to follow the logic of try_increment(). First, it acquires a mutable reference to the storage to update the singleton located at key b"config", made accessible through the config convenience function defined in the src/state.rs. It then updates the present state's count by returning an Ok result with the new state. Finally, it terminates the contract's execution with an acknowledgement of success by returning an Ok result with the Response.

// src/contract.rs

pub fn try_reset(deps: DepsMut, info: MessageInfo, count: i32) -> Result<Response, ContractError> {
    STATE.update(deps.storage, |mut state| -> Result<_, ContractError> {
        if info.sender != state.owner {
            return Err(ContractError::Unauthorized {});
        }
        state.count = count;
        Ok(state)
    })?;
    Ok(Response::new().add_attribute("method", "reset"))
}

The logic for reset is very similar to increment -- except this time, it first checks that the message sender is permitted to invoke the reset function.

# QueryMsg

# Example

The template contract only supports one type of QueryMsg:

# Balance

The request:

{
  "get_count": {}
}

Which should return:

{
  "count": 5
}

# Message Definition

To support queries against the contract for data, you'll have to define both a QueryMsg format (which represents requests), as well as provide the structure of the query's output -- CountResponse in this case. You must do this because query() will send back information to the user through JSON in a structure and you must make the shape of your response known.

Add the following to your src/msg.rs:

// src/msg.rs
#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, JsonSchema)]
#[serde(rename_all = "snake_case")]
pub enum QueryMsg {
    // GetCount returns the current count as a json-encoded number
    GetCount {},
}

// Define a custom struct for each query response
#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, JsonSchema)]
pub struct CountResponse {
    pub count: i32,
}

# Logic

The logic for query() should be similar to that of execute(), except that, since query() is called without the end-user making a transaction, the env argument is ommitted as there is no information.

// src/contract.rs

#[cfg_attr(not(feature = "library"), entry_point)]
pub fn query(deps: Deps, _env: Env, msg: QueryMsg) -> StdResult<Binary> {
    match msg {
        QueryMsg::GetCount {} => to_binary(&query_count(deps)?),
    }
}

fn query_count(deps: Deps) -> StdResult<CountResponse> {
    let state = STATE.load(deps.storage)?;
    Ok(CountResponse { count: state.count })
}

# Building the Contract

To build your contract, run the following command. This will check for any preliminary errors before optimizing.

cargo wasm

# Optimizing your build

TIP

You will need Docker (opens new window) installed to run this command.

You will need to make sure the output WASM binary is as small as possible in order to minimize fees and stay under the size limit for the blockchain. Run the following command in the root directory of your Rust smart contract's project folder.

cargo run-script optimize

If you are on an arm64 machine:

docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/code \
  --mount type=volume,source="$(basename "$(pwd)")_cache",target=/code/target \
  --mount type=volume,source=registry_cache,target=/usr/local/cargo/registry \
  cosmwasm/rust-optimizer-arm64:0.12.4

If you are developing with a Windows exposed Docker daemon connected to WSL 1:

docker run --rm -v "$(wslpath -w $(pwd))":/code \
  --mount type=volume,source="$(basename "$(pwd)")_cache",target=/code/target \
  --mount type=volume,source=registry_cache,target=/usr/local/cargo/registry \
  cosmwasm/rust-optimizer:0.12.4

This will result in an optimized build of artifacts/my_first_contract.wasm or artifacts/my_first_contract-aarch64.wasm in your working directory.

DANGER

Please note that rust-optimizer will produce different contracts on Intel and ARM machines. So for reproducible builds you'll have to stick to one.

# Schemas

In order to make use of JSON-schema auto-generation, you should register each of the data structures that you need schemas for.

// examples/schema.rs

use std::env::current_dir;
use std::fs::create_dir_all;

use cosmwasm_schema::{export_schema, remove_schemas, schema_for};

use my_first_contract::msg::{CountResponse, HandleMsg, InitMsg, QueryMsg};
use my_first_contract::state::State;

fn main() {
    let mut out_dir = current_dir().unwrap();
    out_dir.push("schema");
    create_dir_all(&out_dir).unwrap();
    remove_schemas(&out_dir).unwrap();

    export_schema(&schema_for!(InstantiateMsg), &out_dir);
    export_schema(&schema_for!(ExecuteMsg), &out_dir);
    export_schema(&schema_for!(QueryMsg), &out_dir);
    export_schema(&schema_for!(State), &out_dir);
    export_schema(&schema_for!(CountResponse), &out_dir);
}

You can then build the schemas with:

cargo schema

Your newly generated schemas should be visible in your schema/ directory. The following is an example of schema/query_msg.json.

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#",
  "title": "QueryMsg",
  "anyOf": [
    {
      "type": "object",
      "required": ["get_count"],
      "properties": {
        "get_count": {
          "type": "object"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can use an online tool such as JSON Schema Validator (opens new window) to test your input against the generated JSON schema.

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