Condition Context

A ConditionContext is a container for dynamic values to be used in conditions at verification time. A ConditionContext contains ContextVariables and their corresponding values.

Context Variables

Context variables can be recognized by the : prefix. They act as placeholders within conditions to be specified at the condition definition, whose value is provided at verifiction time.

Context variables are broken up into two groups:

  • Reserved context variables: these have special functionality within taco:

    which requires the use of Authentication Providers to provide verifiable proof of wallet address ownership specified by the data consumer. Applications should be cognizant of which reserved context variable they use based on their needs.

  • Custom context variables: these are application-specific, simple key-value pairs where the data consumer can directly specify the values without any verification.

:userAddress

Whenever the :userAddress context variable is present in a condition, the requester must use one of the following authentication providers for proof of wallet ownership:

  • EIP4361AuthProvider: Prompts the user to sign an EIP-4361 (Sign-in With Ethereum) message to authenticate the data consumer's wallet address at verification time.

To negate the need for repeated wallet signatures for every execution request by the same requester the corresponding proof that is generated is cached until an expiry is triggered, after which the requester will be prompted again.

  • SingleSignOnEIP4361AuthProvider : Designed for applications that have already integrated Sign-in With Ethereum (SIWE), this provider leverages the existing login signature and message. It enables users to authenticate once with the application and seamlessly reuse that authentication with TACo, eliminating the need to sign multiple messages during execution.

TACo requires that Sign-In With Ethereum (SIWE) messages be issued within the last 2 hours based on the "Issued At" timestamp. For single sign-on usage, the application should refresh the user's cached SIWE login accordingly.

  • EIP1271AuthProvider: Intended for scenarios where the user account is a smart contract wallet that implements EIP-1271.

This signature produced by the authentication providers are provided to nodes to prove wallet address ownership when evaluating conditions.

Illustrative Example

Let's take a look at this ContractConditon example:

import { conditions } from '@nucypher/taco';

const ownsNFTRaw = new conditions.contract.ContractCondition({
  method: 'balanceOf',
  parameters: [':userAddress'], // <- A context variable
  standardContractType: 'ERC721',
  contractAddress: '0x1e988ba4692e52Bc50b375bcC8585b95c48AaD77',
  chain: 1,
  returnValueTest: {
    comparator: '>',
    value: ':selectedBalance', // <- Another context variable
  },
});

In this example, we can see two different context variables

  • :userAddress - A reserved context variable

  • :selectedBalance - A custom context variable

To replace the :userAddress context variable with an actual wallet address during verification, TACo needs to be provided with an AuthProvider to confirm wallet ownership at the condition verification time.

Additionally, the :selectedBalance custom context variable has to be provided to the TACo operation by the requester.

Both context variables need to be provided to a ConditionContext which is then used by the node during verification.

import { conditions } from '@nucypher/taco';
import { SingleSignOnEIP4361AuthProvider, USER_ADDRESS_PARAM_DEFAULT } from '@nucypher/taco-auth';

const web3Provider = new ethers.providers.Web3Provider(window.ethereum);

const conditionContext =
  conditions.context.ConditionContext.fromMessageKit(messageKit);
  
// satisfy ":userAddress"
const {messageStr, signature} = ...;  // existing SIWE information from application  
const authProvider = SingleSignOnEIP4361AuthProvider.fromExistingSiweInfo(
  messageStr,
  signature,
);
conditionContext.addAuthProvider(USER_ADDRESS_PARAM_DEFAULT, authProvider);

// satisfy ":selectedBalance"; simple key-value pair
const customParameters: Record<string, conditions.CustomContextParam> = {
  ':selectedBalance': 2,
};
conditionContext.addCustomContextParameterValues(customParameters);

// TACo operation

With those context parameters, the condition will be evaluated by nodes at verification time to be:

{
  method: 'balanceOf',
  parameters: ['0x...'], // The address of requester's wallet (verified via signature)
  standardContractType: 'ERC721',
  contractAddress: '0x1e988ba4692e52Bc50b375bcC8585b95c48AaD77',
  chain: 1,
  returnValueTest: {
    comparator: '>',
    value: 2, // Concrete value to be used in comparison
  },
}

This is a contrived example. For custom context variables specifically, time should be taken to think through the use case since the data consumer provides these and can be set to any value. In this case, the selectedBalance value can simply be set to -1 by the requester, which would grant them access without their owning any NFT. Custom context variables, such as providing a Merkle tree root as a parameter to a contract function, are appropriate, but such an example would be overly complex.

Checking for required context variables

If your application utilizes many different conditions each with different context variables, the required context variables for verification can be queried.

The requestedContextParameters property of the ConditionContext object can be used to identify the necessary context variables for verification. By querying this property, the application can understand the context variables required for the relevant condition.

In this way, the application doesn't need prior knowledge of the condition used but can dynamically determine the context variables needed based on the specific condition being handled.

// create condition context
const conditionContext = conditions.context.ConditionContext.fromMessageKit(messageKit);

// illustrative optional example of checking what context parameters are required
if (
  conditionContext.requestedContextParameters.has(USER_ADDRESS_PARAM_DEFAULT)
) {
  // add authentication for ":userAddress" in condition
  const authProvider = ...;
  conditionContext.addAuthProvider(USER_ADDRESS_PARAM_DEFAULT, authProvider);
}
if (
  conditionContext.requestedContextParameters.has(":selectedBalance")
) {  
  // satisfy ":selectedBalance"; simple key-value pair
  const customParameters: Record<string, conditions.CustomContextParam> = {
    ':selectedBalance': 2,
  };
  conditionContext.addCustomContextParameterValues(customParameters);
}
// other context variable checks ...

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