Ethereum Execution Service

Introduction

Ethereum Execution Service (EES) is a permissionless protocol for decentralized and reliable time-based execution of smart contracts. The protocol allows anyone to build applications on top of it freely and allows their users to create on-chain jobs, executing the application logic on a timely basis. Each job carries a fee paid by the user which goes to incentivize external executors for performing on-chain transactions at the right time. We believe that applications should be built on infrastructure that is as sound as the underlying blockchain. From this comes the importance of a protocol which:

• Does not rely on a single party for execution.

• Does not require high computational power or running a blockchain node to participate in executing jobs.

• Does not make use of off-chain coordination.

The EES aims to achieve this with the goal of increasing web3 adoption by allowing builders to make applications that weren't possible before.

Automated Consumer Applications

EES is made to facilitate automation of user-facing applications. In contrast to existing automation services, typically focusing on internal automation, users of applications built on EES can pay execution fees in any ERC-20 token and do not require locking up any tokens. Users have complete control over their jobs and can utilize different pre-made fee modules to customize how fees are calculated. Furthermore, third parties can sponsor execution fees, allowing users to create and maintain jobs without needing sufficient tokens themselves. This could for example be done by applications to provide an even better UX for their users. EES allows applications such as 1-click subscription payments, dollar cost average (DCA) in DeFi and much much more. Since all jobs are stored on-chain, these take part of the EVM's composability and can be used in other external contracts.

Reliable Execution

EES uses a new mechanism for incentivizing the activity of executing jobs consisting of continuously alternating rounds of open competition between executors and a designated exclusivity similar to PoS. The mechanism relies on zero trust between executors and the whole model is on-chain. The more users of EES, the more executors are incentivized leading to a more reliable platform. This blog post goes into more detail on this topic.

Additionally, it is cheap to run an executor. Since EES is purely time-based, executors can compute and keep track of the next execution time off-chain. This removes the need for continuous blind checking reducing the number of RPC calls by orders of magnitude such that running a node is not required.

Why now?

The recent EIP-4844 upgrade significantly reduced transaction costs on Ethereum L2s, creating an opportunity for automated consumer applications to thrive. For example, it is now cheaper to process a <$10 subscription payment via EES than a traditional payment processor. Lower transaction cost also means that we can build more complex and reliable infrastructure on-chain instead of relying on off-chain coordination.