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Creating a Direct contract

Work in progress

This page is currently being updated - thank you for your understanding.

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This section will go through two implementations of a %%maker contract|maker-contract%%, which inherits from the Direct contract. If you don't know what the Direct contract is, we recommend reading through both the documentation on MangroveOffer and on Direct before continuing.

A simple Direct implementation - the OfferMaker​

Below, we start by going through a fairly simple implementation of the abstract Direct contract.

Recall that Direct is an abstract implementation of MangroveOffer, which is itself a partial implementation of IOfferLogic - the basic interface for maker contracts built with the Strat Library.

Constructor​

The Direct constructor looks like this:

Direct contract's constructor
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Details:

  • mgv (the address of the Mangrove contract) is provided to MangroveOffer.
  • The specific arguments of the Direct's constructor are:
    • the %%router_|router%%'s address, and
    • its %%reserveId|reserve-id%%.
Note

Passing address(0) as reserveId is interpreted by Direct as requiring reserveId to be the contract's address.

The router_ argument can be either the address of a deployed %%router|router%%, or the zero address cast to an AbstractRouter type, when you wish to build a Direct contract that will do its own liquidity routing. (In the latter case, for clarity, you may also use the public constant NO_ROUTER provided by MangroveOffer.)

We will allow users of OfferMaker to supply a %%router|router%%, and use the following constructor for our contract:

Preamble and constructor
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gasreq

We use 30K for default %%gasreq|gasreq%% of our strat. This does not leave room for any advanced %%offer logic|offer-logic%%, so we'll stick here with a very simple one where liquidity is stored on this contract. See how to evaluate gasreq for more information.

Simple offer management​

With this constructor in place we almost have a deployable maker contract. Direct already provides the implementation of a default %%offer logic|offer-logic%% as well as internal functions to post, update and retract offers posted by our contract.

However, Direct does not expose any function able to create new offers on Mangrove, since the _newOffer function of Direct is internal. The requirement in our constructor to implement ILiquidityProvider imposes on us to have a public newOffer function. Using ILiquidityProvider ensures our contract is compatible with the Mangrove SDK, which expects the ILiquidityProvider ABI.

Our implementation of newOffer is simply to expose the internal _newOffer provided by Direct making sure the function is admin restricted (Direct provides the appropriate modifier onlyAdmin):

Offer management functions
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FIXME: Describe the new functions in OfferMaker: newOfferByVolume and updateOfferByVolume

Our maker contract is now complete and ready to be tested and deployed.

Redeeming funds

We do not provide any method to redeem inbound or outbound tokens from the contract. However, MangroveOffer provides an admin-only approve function, that allows contract's admin to retrieve any token, following a call sequence of the form:

makerContract.approve(token, address(this), amount);
token.transferFrom(address(makerContract), address(this), amount);

Advanced Direct offer: Liquidity Amplification with Amplifier​

With a simple implementation of Direct under our belt, let us proceed show how we can tweak our maker contract to do something more interesting that posting plain offers on Mangrove.

Suppose we have a certain amount N of some BASE token and we wish to put it for sale on two markets at the same time. To simplify assume that BASE is some volatile asset like ETH and we wish to sell it for any of two (equivalent-ish) stables STABLE1 and STABLE2 (e.g. DAI and USDC).

Of course, if we offer N tokens both on the (BASE, STABLE1) and the (BASE, STABLE2) %%offer lists|offer-list%%, one of our offers will fail if both are taken.

We have a design choice here. Either we

  1. let the second offer fail and compensate the taker with our offer's %%bounty|bounty%%, or,
  2. incorporate in our offer logic that we wish to retract the second offer when the first one is taken.

Let's follow the second design principle as it allows us to illustrate how to use the %%hooks|hook%% provided by Direct to update offer prices or to retract offers.

Constructor​

We modify the simple constructor of OfferMaker to take into account the additional gas requirements of Amplifier's logic: To retract (or update) the second offer each time an offer is taken. We also choose to specialize instances of our maker contract to a particular choice of BASE, STABLE1 and STABLE2 tokens - requiring these to be given as arguments when construing the contract.

In the constructor below, we also show how to instantiate and setup a simple %%router|router%% in order to use the deployer's account as fund reserve.

Amplifier - Preamble and constructor
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Note that as we manually construct and configure router_ and set it as the router of Amplifier, we initially send the constant NO_ROUTER as argument to the Direct constructor.

As in the example above, we need to create a way for the maker contract to post an offer. For this example, we will not try to comply to the ILiquidityProvider interface - and therefore this contract will no longer be fully usable with the SDK. We will use a custom way of posting our two offers in the same transaction.

Publishing amplified liquidity​

We already know some of the parameters we need to implement posting new offers, since we gave them in the constructor: We know the %%inbound|inbound%% and the %%outbound|outbound%% tokens of both offers. Also, we do not want the %%offer owner|offer-owner%% to have to specify new offer's %%gasprice|gasprice%% and %%gasreq|gasreq%% so we just use default values.

If we specify a gasprice of zero when posting the offer, Mangrove will use its own gas price. For gasreq, we can use the public getter offerGasreq(), which returns the default gas requirement for the contract plus the gas required for the %%router|router%%.

This leaves us having to provide the amount that the offer should %%give|gives%% in BASE token, and the amount of STABLE1 and STABLE2, which the offer %%wants|wants%% - wants1 and wants2. We also need to specify the TODO:%pivot ids|pivot-id% for insertion of the two offers (pivot1 and pivot2) in the relevant %%offer lists|offer-list%%. As for OfferMaker, we only want the admin of the contract to able to post offers, so we use the modifier onlyAdmin again.

Amplifier - Publishing amplified offers
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In the implementation of newAmplifiedOffers notice the calls to the offer data getter MGV.offers(address, address, uint): This returns a packed data structure offer whose fields f can be unpacked by doing offer.f() (see the documentation for the offer data structure).

possible gas optimization

If both our amplified offers were once live on Mangrove, but are no longer (either after a retract or because one of them was consumed by a taker), it is more gas efficient to update the offers to reinstate them on the %%offer list|offer-list%%, rather than creating new ones as we do in the above code.

Updating an under-collateralized offer on the fly​

With newAmplifiedOffers implemented, we can now post new offers. We hope that one of these offers will be taken at some point. When this happens, as per the specification we decided upon above, we wish to retract the other offer, which is now un(der)-collateralized, in order to save some %%provision|provision%%. To do this we override the posthookSuccess %%hook|hook%%.

The signature and first line of our custom %%hook|hook%% looks like this:

Amplifier - Reposting the residual
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Notice that we call super's implementation of the hook. This ultimately ends up attempting to repost the offer residual (cf. the documentation of Post trade hooks for MangroveOffer and the reference for Customizing makerPosthook). The return value captured in repost_status tells us whether the offer had a residual (in case of a %%maker partial fill|maker-partial-fill%%).

default reposting policy

Direct offers that are partially filled are automatically reposted during posthook, adapting %%wants|wants%% to remaining %%gives|gives%% in order to maintain offer's original price. Direct's posthook returns the constants REPOST_SUCCESS in case the offer's residual was reposted, or COMPLETE_FILL if the offer was entirely consumed by taker (these constants are defined in MangroveOffer). If the offer fails to repost, the hook returns Mangrove's reason.

Implementing case 1: An offer was reposted with a residual​

We continue our implementation of the __posthookSuccess__ hook by handling case 1:

Amplifier - Reposting case 1: An offer was reposted with a residual
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Notice the use of the hook __residualGives__ in the code snippet above. For the offer currently being executed, it returns the %%give|gives%% at that offer when it is reposted. By default, this is calculated by subtracting what the taker took during %%makerExecute|makerExecute%% from what the offer originally gave.

Also notice that we go through a slightly more complex calculation to compute the updated wants for the other offer: We cannot use __residualWants__ to deduce the amount of tokens the other offer should %%want|wants%%, because we cannot assume both STABLE1 and STABLE2 have the same decimals. (For this example, we only assume that they have the same value with respect to BASE.) We could zero-pad or truncate, but it is more elegant to compute the new %%wants|wants%% based on the new %%gives|gives%% - we set the constraint that we wish to preserve the TODO:%entailed price|offer-entailed-price%.

Retracting the uncollateralized offer on the fly​

During the execution of the %%offer logic|offer-logic%% it may occur that the taken offer does not repost itself on the %%offer list|offer-list%%. This may happen for the following reasons:

  • the offer was completely filled
  • the offer is %%partially filled|maker-partial-fill%% but its residual is below the offer list's %%density|density%%
  • the offer no longer has enough %%provision|provision%%. This last case may occur if one is reposting an offer that has failed (because a part of the %%provision|provision%% was turned into a %%bounty|bounty%%), or because Mangrove's %%gasprice|gasprice%% is now above the offer's gasprice. (This may happen, if Mangrove updated its own gasprice after the offer was last posted.)

In all of these cases we wish to retract the other offer from the book.

Implementing case 2: An offer was not reposted, and we need to retract the other offer​

We continue our hook by handling case 2 from our breakdown above.

Amplifier - Reposting case 2: Offer was not reposted
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Refunding offer automatically

There is an alternative to retracting both offers in case the taken offer failed to repost itself for lack of provision: We might replenish the maker contract's balance on Mangrove. However, we advise against refunding provisions automatically within the %%offer logic|offer-logic%% itself:

Suppose that you instrumented your offer logic to do this. Now, if an attacker found a reproducible way of making your offer fail, they could loop that attack for as long as you repost a reprovision for your offer. This could ultimately draining your native token balance!

Managing offer failure​

When writing posthooks, we need to consider all possible outcomes. The first outcome we have handled above assumed that the offer was successful. However, it might also be that the offer failed when it was taken. In this setup, this may happen, for instance, because we opted for using a router that brings liquidity from deployer's account. Nothing prevents this account from being empty when the market order actually arrives.

If this happens, this means that the offer that was unsuccessfully taken is no longer live on Mangrove and that some %%bounty|bounty%% has been sent to the taker. However, in this case, we know that the other offer will also fail if taken. For this reason, in case if a trade fails, rather than waiting for the other offer to fail by itself, we can save some %%provision|provision%% and override posthookFallback to retract the other offer:

Amplifier - Managing offer failure
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