Simpler support for proxies and meta-transactions.

[drortirosh]

When using proxies (or meta-transactions), it is often needed to have the encoded function without calling it.
With ethers 5.x, the syntax is a bit cumbersome:

e.g.

const amount = ethers.constants.MaxUint256
const tokenApproveCalldata = await token.populateTransaction.approve(target, amount).then(tx=>tx.data!)
await proxy.exec(token.address, tokenApproveCalldata)

it would be nice to have a top-level "encodeAbi" entry (which will also work without requiring "await"
e.g.

const tokenApproveCalldata = await token.encodeAbi.approve(target, amount)

[drortirosh]

there is a way to do it, but it is not that easy to use:

token.interface.encodeFunctionData('approve', [target, amount])

The problem comes with type-safety (when used in conjunction with typechain): try to make a mistake (in method name, or even parameter type), and the error becomes incomprehensible - the compiler can't match valid string param to array param, so the error references the LAST method (which is probably not "approve"), which makes the error almost useless.
The above "populateTransaction" gives nice and useful errors.

this is NOT a problem in typechain itself: it merely add types to ethers API.

[ricmoo]

A top-level encodeAbi would still need to use await, since that addresses may be ENS names, and in v6 they can be a Signer, Contract, etc. all of which are async sources of a value.

For your purposes, what you would probably want to do is sub-class Signer, and use that with the contract. Then your Signer can automatically perform the required steps of populating the transaction and executing it. That is the design pattern the Signer was designed for, to abstract what calling/sending means so that meta-transaction and L2 access just has code that looks like any other.

Once you have said Signer, it can just be used interchangeably with existing code, contracts, functions, etc.

Does that make sense?

[ricmoo]

(moving to discussions)

[drortirosh]

I guess await is a "necessary evil"...
where/when v6 can be tried out ?