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Version: V5

Completing Draw Auctions

Tutorial: 👨‍⚖️ Creating a Draw Auction bot​

In order for PoolTogether to work, a random number is required to choose winners and complete draws. PoolTogether V5 incentivizes anyone looking to request and relay random numbers from a trusted and verifiable RNG service.

Draws are daily, which means:

  • there is 1 startRngRequest that needs to take place (typically on an L1 such as Ethereum mainnet) each day
  • there is n number of relay transactions that need to take place for n number of prize pools

Prize pools typically live on L2s as it is much cheaper for poolers to deposit and withdraw on L2s. In these cases, the relay transaction will also bridge the RNG from the source (eg. Ethereum) to the destination (eg. Optimism).

To earn from completing draw auctions you will need to:​

  1. Check to see if there are open auctions
  2. Compute the rewards that can be earned
  3. Compute associated costs
  4. If completing an auction is profitable, execute a transaction to complete it

1. Check For Open Auctions​

RngAuction​

You can use isAuctionOpen on the RngAuction contract to test if the auction is open and can be completed.

RngRelayAuction​

Finding out if the RngRelayAuction is open is a bit more complicated due to it being based on the previous RngAuction. It also has an isAuctionOpen function however this it requires two parameters: isAuctionOpen(_sequenceId, _rngCompletedAt).

_sequenceId can be found by querying RngAuction for lastSequenceId().

_rngCompletedAt can be found by querying RngAuction for getRngResults(). This returns two values: the randomNumber and rngCompletedAt.

2. Compute Rewards​

RngAuction​

We can get the expected reward that the PrizePool will pay out from it's reserve to determine profitability before running any transactions. First, we need the reserve from the PrizePool. This can be calculated by summing the reserve with the reserveForOpenDraw:

PrizePool.reserve().add(PrizePool.reserveForOpenDraw())

We can then multiply the currentFractionalReward with the summed reserve to get the expected reward in prize tokens:

RngAuction.currentFractionalReward().mul(reserveSummed)

RngRelayAuction​

The expected reward from the RngRelayAuction is a bit more involved as it relies on the state of the previous RngAuction:

  uint32 lastSequenceId = rngAuction.lastSequenceId();

  UD2x18 rewardFraction = rngAuction.currentFractionalReward();

  AuctionResult memory auctionResult = AuctionResult({
    rewardFraction: rewardFraction,
    recipient: address(this) // reward recipient address
  });

  AuctionResult[] memory auctionResults = new AuctionResult[](1);
  auctionResults[0] = auctionResult;

  uint256[] memory rewards = rngRelayAuction.computeRewards(auctionResults);

3. Compute Costs​

RngAuction​

In some test environments the RNG uses the blockhash, which is not useful in production. When the RNG is derived from the blockhash we can use the RngAuction contract directly.

In production, currently the Chainlink VRF2 Direct Funding model is used to receive a random number. This requires we find the cost of the RNG in LINK. There is a helper contract specifically for working with the VRF. The estimateRequestFee function requires the current chain's gas price as an argument:

  (address _feeToken, uint256 _requestFee) = 
    ChainlinkVRFV2DirectRngAuctionHelperContract.estimateRequestFee(
      gasPrice
    );

RngRelayAuction​

The RngRelayAuction does not have any other associated costs, other than typical chain gas costs.

4. Completing an Auction​

RngAuction​

To complete an RNG auction you can run the RngAuction's startRngRequest(address _rewardRecipient) if the RNG is set to blockhash.

If the rngService is set, use the ChainlinkVRFV2DirectRngAuctionHelper contract's transferFeeAndStartRngRequest(address _rewardRecipient).

Make sure to first approve a LINK allowance to the ChainlinkVRFV2DirectRngAuctionHelper contract.

RngRelayAuction​

You can use the RngAuctionRelayerDirect contract's relay(address _rngAuctionRelayListener, address _relayRewardRecipient) to complete a relay auction if the PrizePool lives on the same chain as the RngRelayAuction contract.

If the PrizePool contract lives on a different chain, an ERC5164-compatible RngAuctionRelayerRemoteOwner contract will need to be used. This will complete the relay auction while also transferring the random number from the source chain to the destination chain the PrizePool lives on:

  function relay(
    IMessageDispatcher _messageDispatcher,
    uint256 _remoteOwnerChainId,
    RemoteOwner _remoteOwner,
    IRngAuctionRelayListener _remoteRngAuctionRelayListener,
    address _rewardRecipient
  )
RngAuctionRelayerRemoteOwner on Github

Reference Implementation​

To see code examples, a reference implementation of an draw auction bot created by Generation Software is available on GitHub:

GitHub - pt-v5-autotasks-draw-auction