Epoch Protocol

Inspiration

While doing mundane tasks in web3 we realize some things need to be simplified and some normal functionalities are missing. One such thing is smart contract automation or automation of time-based or recurring tasks. While regularly claiming prizes from poolTogether(they clawback prizes if we don't claim them), we noticed there is nothing available for the end user to put their recurring tasks or some time-bound tasks on auto-pilot, thus we took it upon ourselves to build one such product that will solve various problems like Crypto SIPs, auto restaking in yield farms, Uniswap v2 conditional liquidity providing and a lot more cool stuff. Eventually, we will also be moving to provide more robust solutions to various other businesses and protocols.

What it does

We are enabling individuals to automate some functions on their smart contracts and protocols that they regularly use.

Pitch Deck - https://tinyurl.com/PitchDeckEpoch

We provide following features as a protocol as of now:

v1 (Submitted for hackathon)

• • Users can setup their recurring task to be executed automatically.
• • These tasks can be AAVE/Uniswap SIP and ENS renew.
• • All the tasks that needs to be executed get listed on Dapp, anyone can come and execute them without even having to pay gas fee.
• • Executors have fixed rewards so they don't have to calculate if a transaction is profitable for them or not.
• • Real people ( Executors ) will invoke transactions for you on your behalf.

Challenges we ran into

• • It was difficult to design an architecture for the dapp and smart contracts since the job creation part has to be arbitrary and it is pretty hard to create do bytes manipulation to create smart contracts calls data.
• • We also had to find out a way to make the off-chain execution part as little as possible - which would’ve required a protocol specific network(blockchain) to be up and running.
• • Smart Contract wallet was also a difficult part since the users fund management and giving compatibility for other contracts along with good security is hard to achieve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• • We were selected to Polkadot relayers (Accelerator program) first cohort to build the project
• • We were successfull in creating contracts for Job Registry, Epoch Smart Contract User Wallet and other supporting contracts.
• • We were able to execute Arbitrary Jobs as well as jobs that connect to Protocols like AAVE, Uniswap and ENS (for certain tasks like automatic SIPs etc, deposit, withdraws etc.) on behalf of the user.
• • We integrated Biconomy to make the job execution completely gasless but still profitable.

What we learned

On the product Side

We learned that UX is one of most important aspects of this project - since Automation is complex and thus we need to design the app in such a way that it is easy for both normal users as well as devs to use our dapp.

On the Tech Side

We learned about the nuances of creating a Smart Contract Wallet that will handle user funds and data, another thing we learned was making arbitrary smart contract calls to support our feature of delegated transaction.

What's next for Epoch Protocol

v2 (After the launch of V1)

• • Along with v1 we will add our own network, that will execute tasks that has strict deadline.
• • This network will be essential to cater B2B needs.
• • We would also allow off chain code execution along with on-chain execution.
• • We also intend to have a user-centric product that will be built along with the protocol, it will have the following features :
• • Automating recurring tasks for users of certain protocols. - • Decentralised crypto-based SIPs. - • Migrating loans from one protocol to another for better APR %. - • Uniswap v3 like liquidity management for uniswap v2 fork ( Providing liquidity for a specific price range to cut down impermanent losses ). - • Providing users to create limit orders on DEXs.

How we built it

• There are three components to the whole project

• Smart Contract Wallet

• Handles users funds, permissions and allowances

• Makes it very easy for user to manage his jobs and automation tasks

• Job Registry

• Creates a job marketplace for the protocol

• Executors can come and run any job with gasless Biconomy integration and earn rewards

• While users can add their Arbritary Jobs as well as Dapps(AAVE, Uniswap etc.) Specific Jobs

• Protocol / Destination Execution Contracts

• Protocol specific modules that enable automation for them, and facilitate transaction building.

Sponsor Technologies we used:

• EPNS: We have integrated EPNS notifications, so that user will be notified on every action taken on his/her job
• The Graph: We have integrated several subgraphs to index the data from the blockchain, and get all listed jobs and epoch wallets, jobs details, job execution history etc.
• Valist: All our team members are on valist and all the releases will published through valist and GitHub,. the site is also hosted live on valist right now
• Aave: We are making Aave more accessible to users, we have created automated deposit job (similar to an SIP) on AAVE, where user can deposit some fixed amount to aave in particular time intervals automatically without manually visiting AAVE.
• Cross-Chain: We have deployed our dapp on Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Skale Network, Cronos, Aurora and Oasis-Foundation chains, making our automation protocol completely multi-chain. This means no matter what chain, users can automate their tasks.
• ENS - We also made a ENS Automation that allows anyone to automatically renew their .eth name.