Human readable transactions

Keeping users informed.

How does it work?

A big part of Aragon is user-friendliness, and one of the most unfriendly things in the Ethereum world is transaction data.

Examine this screenshot of a transaction in MetaMask:

UTF8 string in MetaMask

Would you know what this transaction does? Not even a developer could tell. This is why we created Radspec.

Radspec is a secure alternative to Natspec. Natspec was supposed to be a way to describe transactions from a Natspec expression and some transaction data.

The issue with Natspec, however, is that it is insecure. Any JavaScript can execute in Natspec which opens up a lot of potential attacks, like cross-site scripting, which might successfully phish users.

How to use Radspec

It's as easy as adding @notice to functions in the smart contracts.

contract Counter is AragonApp {
    /**
     * @notice Increment the counter by `step`
     */
    function increment(int step) auth(INCREMENT_ROLE) external {
        // ...
    }

    /**
     * @notice Decrement the counter by `step`
     */
    function decrement(int step) auth(DECREMENT_ROLE) external {
        // ...
    }
}

These Radspec expressions are written in comments in your source code, and they will be grabbed by aragon and bundled with your app.

The Aragon client will display these with the transaction a user is about to perform so that they have a clear understanding of what they're about to sign.

Screenshot of signer showing Radspec

Our Radspec expressions show up while signing a transaction.

Obviously, this is a super trivial example as we are not actually evaluating anything but we could instead write something more complex.