Calling Contracts

Smart contracts can be called by other contracts or scripts. In the FuelVM, this is done primarily with the call instruction.

Sway provides a nice way to manage callable interfaces with its abi system. The Fuel ABI specification can be found here.

Example

Here is an example of a contract calling another contract in Sway. A script can call a contract in the same way.

// ./contract_a.sw
contract;

abi ContractA {
    fn receive(field_1: bool, field_2: u64) -> u64;
}

impl ContractA for Contract {
    fn receive(field_1: bool, field_2: u64) -> u64 {
        assert(field_1 == true);
        assert(field_2 > 0);
        return_45()
    }
}

fn return_45() -> u64 {
  45
}

// ./contract_b.sw
contract;

use contract_a::ContractA;

abi ContractB {
    fn make_call();
}

const contract_id = 0x79fa8779bed2f36c3581d01c79df8da45eee09fac1fd76a5a656e16326317ef0;

impl ContractB for Contract {
    fn make_call() {
      let x = abi(ContractA, contract_id);
      let return_value = x.receive(true, 3); // will be 45
    }
}

Note: The ABI is for external calls only therefore you cannot define a method in the ABI and call it in the same contract. If you want to define a function for a contract, but keep it private so that only your contract can call it, you can define it outside of the impl and call it inside the contract, similar to the return_45() function above.

Advanced Calls

All calls forward a gas stipend, and may additionally forward one native asset with the call.

Here is an example of how to specify the amount of gas (gas), the asset ID of the native asset (asset_id), and the amount of the native asset (amount) to forward:

script;

abi MyContract {
    fn foo(field_1: bool, field_2: u64);
}

fn main() {
    let x = abi(MyContract, 0x79fa8779bed2f36c3581d01c79df8da45eee09fac1fd76a5a656e16326317ef0);
    let asset_id = 0x7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777_7777;
    x.foo {
        gas: 5000, asset_id: asset_id, amount: 5000
    }
    (true, 3);
}

Handling Re-entrancy

A common attack vector for smart contracts is re-entrancy. Similar to the EVM, the FuelVM allows for re-entrancy.

A stateless re-entrancy guard is included in the Sway standard library. The guard will panic (revert) at run time if re-entrancy is detected.

contract;

use std::reentrancy::reentrancy_guard;

abi MyContract {
    fn some_method();
}

impl ContractB for Contract {
    fn some_method() {
        reentrancy_guard();
        // do something
    }
}

Differences from the EVM

While the Fuel contract calling paradigm is similar to the EVM's (using an ABI, forwarding gas and data), it differs in two key ways:

1. Native assets: FuelVM calls can forward any native asset not just base asset.

2. No data serialization: Contract calls in the FuelVM do not need to serialize data to pass it between contracts; instead they simply pass a pointer to the data. This is because the FuelVM has a shared global memory which all call frames can read from.