Auth

Terra's Auth module inherits from Cosmos SDK's auth module. This document is a stub, and covers mainly important Terra-specific notes about how it is used.

Terra's Auth module extends the functionality from Cosmos SDK's auth module with a modified ante handler which applies the stability layer fee alongside the all basic transaction validity checks (signatures, nonces, auxiliary fields). In addition, a special vesting account type is defined, which handles the logic for token vesting from the Luna presale.

Fees

The Auth module reads the current effective TaxRate and TaxCap parameters from the Treasury module to enforce a stability layer fee.

Gas Fee

As with any other transaction, MsgSend and MsgMultiSend pay a gas fee the size of which depends on validator's preferences (each validator sets his own min-gas-fees) and the complexity of the transaction. Notes on gas and fees has a more detailed explanation of how gas is computed. Important detail to note here is that gas fees are specified by the sender when the transaction is outbound.

Stability Fee

In addition to the gas fee, the pay module charges a stability fee that is a percentage of the transaction's value. It reads the Tax Rate and Tax Cap parameters from the Treasury module to compute the amount of stability tax that needs to be charged.

The Tax Rate is a parameter agreed upon by the network that specifies the percentage of payment transactions that will be collected as Tax Proceeds in the block reward, which will be distributed among the validators. The distribution model is a bit complicated and explained in detail here. The taxes collected per transaction cannot exceed the specific Tax Cap defined for that transaction's denomination. Every epoch, the Tax Rate and Tax Caps are recalibrated automatically by the network; see here for more details.

For an example MsgSend transaction of µSDR tokens,

stability fee = min(1000 * tax_rate, tax_cap(usdr))

For a MsgMultiSend transaction, a stability fee is charged from every outbound transaction.

Unlike with the gas fee which needs to be specified by the sender, the stability fee is automatically deducted from the sender's Account.

Parameters

The subspace for the Auth module is auth.

type Params struct {
    MaxMemoCharacters      uint64 `json:"max_memo_characters" yaml:"max_memo_characters"`
    TxSigLimit             uint64 `json:"tx_sig_limit" yaml:"tx_sig_limit"`
    TxSizeCostPerByte      uint64 `json:"tx_size_cost_per_byte" yaml:"tx_size_cost_per_byte"`
    SigVerifyCostED25519   uint64 `json:"sig_verify_cost_ed25519" yaml:"sig_verify_cost_ed25519"`
    SigVerifyCostSecp256k1 uint64 `json:"sig_verify_cost_secp256k1" yaml:"sig_verify_cost_secp256k1"`
}

MaxMemoCharacters

Maximum permitted number of characters in the memo of a transaction.

• type: uint64
• default value: 256

TxSigLimit

The maximum number of singers in a transaction. A single transaction can have multiple messages and multiple signers. The sig verification cost is much higher than other operations, so we limit this to 100.

• type: uint64
• default value: 100

TxSizeCostPerByte

Used to compute gas consumption of the transaction, TxSizeCostPerByte * txsize.

• type: uint64
• default value: 10

SigVerifyCostED25519

The gas cost for verifying ED25519 signatures.

• type: uint64
• default value: 590

SigVerifyCostSecp256k1

The gas cost for verifying Secp256k1 signatures.

• type: uint64
• default value: 1000