preston4896 / governance_voting_dapp

Voting dApp by Preston Ong

Description:

A very simple decentralized web application (dApp) for users to submit a proposal with binary options that can be voted with either a yay or nay option. Users who picked the majority vote by the end of a proposal can claim ETH and withdraw to their accounts. The app is now live and can be accessed here.

Available Networks:

The smart contract is currently deployed to the following Ethereum test networks:

• Goerli
• Rinkeby
• Ropsten

Note: Do not run the $ truffle test command on any of the above testnet, the test cases provided can only work on a local blockchain (i.e. Ganache).

Project Structure:

.
├── README.md
├── index.html
├── package.json
├── secrets.json
├── src
│   ├── contracts
│   │   └── Vote.sol
│   ├── js
│   │   └── app.min.js
├── test
│   └── test_vote.test.js
└── truffle-config.js

Components:

1. secret.json

   • All API keys and mnemonic phrases of this app is to be stored in this file locally.
   • An example json file looks like the following:

   {
       "mnemonic": <insert mnemonic seed phrase here>,
       "infuraApiKey" : <insert Infura API key here>,
       "etherscanApiKey" : <insert Etherscan API key here, for contract verification purpose>
   }
   

2. Vote.sol

   • The backend smart contract of this dApp, acts as an escrow when users submitted their proposals and/or votes. It also ensures that users with the winning votes would get their ETH funds withdrawn.

3. app.min.js

   • Minified JS code that renders the front-end DOM components by using the ReactJS framework.

4. testVote.test.js

   • Test cases for unit testing the smart contract to ensure all functions are working as expected.

5. truffle-config.js

   • Truffle configuration for compiling and deploying the smart contract.

6. package.json

   • Dependencies used in this project.

---

Quick Demo On The Live App

1. Click here to the app and make sure that you have MetaMask installed.

2. Connect your Metamask wallet to the app on the Rinkeby Network.

3. Click on "Search or Vote On Proposal(s)", then entered "1" in the input field. This would load the proposal with ID #1.

4. You should see something similar to the screenshot below:

5. Make sure that you have some ETH in your account when you vote, otherwise the transaction will fail. You can get some test ETH from the faucet.

6. Once you picked a vote and initiated a transaction, it should take up to 20-30 seconds to include your vote in the proposal.

---

Instructions to use on your local machine

1. Clone this repository. $ git clone https://github.com/preston4896/advanca_voting_dApp.git

2. Install dependencies. $ npm install

3. Start the local blockchain by running Ganache, $ ganache-cli -p 7545

4. Available scripts:

   • $ truffle compile : Compiles the Solidity Code into EVM readable code.
   • $ truffle migrate --network <option> : Deploys the smart contract to a network given by <option>, the default value is development, which deploys the contract locally to Ganache.
   • $ truffle test : Unit test the smart contract. Local network only
   • $ npm run compile : Compiles the JSX code to JS code using Babel.
   • $ npm run build : Minifies the JS file to be used for production.
   • $ npm run start : Creates a server and starts the dApp locally.

Known Issue(s)

1. Transaction is still out of gas on the Goerli testnet even after fixing the gas limit vulnerability.

2. The front-end UI sometimes rendered incorrectly, due to the delay in updating the app's component states.

Future Improvements

1. Better UI design with CSS.

2. Bonus features: Allowing users an alternative voting staking option by depositing their ERC20 tokens instead of ETHs.

Last Updated: March 19th, 2021.

governance_voting_dapp's Issues

Metamask throws `ALERT: Transaction Error. Exception thrown in contract code.` error

Out of Gas fee error across all test networks. The cause of this bug is due to the inactive call of the function modifier checkWinner() from Vote.sol. The function essentially relies on the user's constant interaction with the smart contract, to stay in sync with the current block number. This function is poorly implemented using for loops. The reason for this implementation is that the smart contract has to routinely check for expiring proposals and determine its winning vote. As a result, this function call can gradually become very expensive, if the app is not frequently used. For example, if the last synced block is 1000 and a user calls the checkWinner() modifier at current block = 10000, then the for loops will have to go through 9000 iterations. This is a very infeasible approach. I have to come up with a solution that can be automated to routinely look for proposals that are about to expire and keep in sync with the current block.