Consider adding support for EIP-2535 when connecting and interacting with Diamond-compliant contracts

[Ungolim]

The Diamond Standard is an emerging standard to provide smart contracts with the right amount of modularity and cohesion, with a built-in, flexible upgrade mechanism at the center. The Standard also introduces the "Diamond Storage", a storage pattern that is well suited for proxy contracts and diamonds alike as it greatly simplifies organizing and using state contract variables.

Some introductions:

• https://dev.to/mudgen/understanding-diamonds-on-ethereum-1fb
• https://medium.com/1milliondevs/new-storage-layout-for-proxy-contracts-and-diamonds-98d01d0eadb

The reference implementations: https://github.com/mudgen/diamond
The EIP: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2535

I propose that the ethers.js team considers introducing early support for the Diamond Standard at the library level

Official Discord server for the Diamond Standard: https://discord.gg/y9EWSVBS7C

[ricmoo]

What would library level support look like?

This is something I think could easily be handled by an ancillary library, no?

[Ungolim]

What would library level support look like?

This is something I think could easily be handled by an ancillary library, no?

Maybe, I was hoping to kickstart a discussion around it as the steps that ethers takes before actually submitting (even raw txs) might not be workable by any higher level library. Case in point, here's a very recent example of this problem (and one author's workaround to it): wighawag/hardhat-deploy#72 (comment)

In our case the ancillary library would be hardhat-deploy, a crucial plugin on top of the Hardhat framework, all that would be needed is a way for us to successfully send UncheckedTransactions to the Diamond address, carrying calldata encoded from another contract ABI (a Facet) which the Diamond itself cannot possess.

Here's a successful way to achieve that using Truffle and Web3, from the reference implementations:

• instantiate Facet contracts through the Diamond: https://github.com/mudgen/diamond-3/blob/b009cd08b7822bad727bbcc47aa1b50d8b50f7f0/test/diamondTest.js#L58-L66
• (static or not) call to Contracts connected with Signer: https://github.com/mudgen/diamond-3/blob/b009cd08b7822bad727bbcc47aa1b50d8b50f7f0/test/diamondTest.js#L124-L127

Update: This can be achieved in exactly the same native way in Ethers:

• Facet connection (to cut in a new Facet, governance in this case): https://github.com/ARM-Finance/kingmaker/blob/c0aca060476b9ff0d7448fb7c5f2d8ce18305cda/protocol/deploy/governance/02_kingmaker_governance_facet.ts#L47-50
• New Facet query: https://github.com/ARM-Finance/kingmaker/blob/c0aca060476b9ff0d7448fb7c5f2d8ce18305cda/protocol/deploy/governance/02_kingmaker_governance_facet.ts#L57-60

However, I would also like to know a way to do it without instantiating and connecting to the Contract instances, in a more raw way like I attempted here: https://github.com/ARM-Finance/kingmaker/blob/c0aca060476b9ff0d7448fb7c5f2d8ce18305cda/protocol/deploy/governance/02_kingmaker_governance_facet.ts#L51-54 but failed due to this portion: https://github.com/ARM-Finance/kingmaker/blob/c0aca060476b9ff0d7448fb7c5f2d8ce18305cda/protocol/libs/CrownHelper.ts#L27-30

In any case and finally, I opened this thread because I also wanted to bring to your attention the standard in case you didn't hear of it yet, and because I see that ethers has indeed special support for key Ethereum standards like: https://docs.ethers.io/v5/single-page/#/v5/api/contract/example/-%23-example-erc-20-contract--connecting-to-a-contract--erc20contract