tally-extension

Tally is a community owned and operated Web3 wallet, built as a WebExtension.

Package Structure, Build Structure, and Threat Model

The extension is built as two packages, one for the wallet and one for the frontend UI. These are separate packages in order to emphasize the difference in attack surface and clearly separate the threat models of the two packages. In particular, the frontend UI is considered completely untrusted code, while the wallet is considered trusted code. Only the wallet should interact directly with key material, while the frontend should only interact with key material via a carefully-maintained public API.

The wallet package is also intended to minimize external dependencies where possible, to reduce the surface exposed to a supply chain attack. Dependencies are generally version-pinned, and yarn is used to ensure the integrity of builds.

Building and Developing

Builds are designed to be run from the top level of the repository.

Development Setup

If you’re on macOS, install Homebrew and run scripts/macos-setup.sh. Note that if you don’t have Homebrew or you’re not on macOS, the below information details what you’ll need. The script additionally sets up pre-commit hooks.

$ ./scripts/macos-setup.sh

Required Software

If you can't use the macOS setup script, here is the software you'll need to install:

• jq: Instructions
• nvm: Instructions
• pre-commit: Instructions

Installing pre-commit hooks

Before committing code to this repository or a fork/branch that you intend to submit for inclusion, please make sure you've installed the pre-commit hooks by running pre-commit --install. The macOS setup script does this for you.

Quickstart

$ nvm use
$ npm install -g yarn # if you don't have yarn globally installed
$ yarn install # install all dependencies; rerun with --ignore-scripts if
               # scrypt node-gyp failures prevent the install from completing
$ yarn start # start a continuous webpack build that will auto-update with changes

Once the continuous webpack build is running, you can install the extension in your dev browser of choice:

• Firefox instructions
• Chrome, Brave, and Opera instructions
  • Note that these instructions are for Chrome, but substituting brave://extensions or opera://extensions for chrome://extensions depending on browser should get you to the same buttons.

Extension bundles for each browser are in dist/<browser>.

By default, the yarn start command rebuilds the extension for each browser on save. You can target a particular browser by specifying it in the command, e.g. to only rebuild the Firefox extension on change:

# On change, rebuild the firefox extension but not others.
$ yarn start --config-name firefox
# On change, rebuild the firefox and brave extensions but not others.
$ yarn start --config-name firefox --config-name brave

Releasing a version

This repository uses yarn version to create new versions. Typical usage:

$ yarn version --patch # bump patch version, e.g. 0.0.5->0.0.6
$ yarn version --minor # bump minor version, e.g. 0.1.5->0.2.0

Major releases generally require more discussion than this automation allows, but can be managed the same way.

Bumping a version in this way will do a few things:

• Ensure the commit is running on the correct branch (release-<new-version>) for review. If you are on a different branch, the script attempts to switch to a new branch based on the latest origin/main. Releases should generally only add version bumps to the main branch.
• Synchronize the extension manifest version to the updated package version.
• Commit, tag, and push the new version and branch.

Once the branch is pushed, you should open a pull request. This will do any further processing, including potentially managing automated submission of the new version to extension directories (as relevant).

Additional Scripts

$ yarn build # create a production build of the extension

The build script will generate a ZIP file for each browser bundle under the dist/ directory.

$ yarn lint # lint all sources in all projects
$ yarn lint-fix # auto-fix any auto-fixable lint issues
$ yarn test # run all tests in all projects

A note on git blame

Because lint configurations can occasionally evolve in a way that hits many files in the repository at once and obscures the functional blame readout for files, this repository has a .git-blame-ignore-revs file. This file can be used to run git blame while skipping over the revisions it lists, as described in the Pro Git book reference and this Moxio blog post.

To make use of this, you can do one of the following:

• Run git config --global blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs to configure git to globally look for such a file. The filename is relatively standard across projects, so this should save time for other projects that use a similar setup.
• Run git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs to configure your local checkout to always ignore these files.
• Add --ignore-revs-file .git-blame-ignore-revs to your git blame invocation to ignore the file one time.

The GitHub UI does not yet ignore these commits, though there is a community thread requesting the feature. In the meantime, the GitHub blame UI does allow you to zoom to the previous round of changes on a given line, which relieves much of the annoyance; see the GitHub blame docs for more.

Architecture

Here is a light architecture diagram describing the relationship between services (in the API package) and the interface and browser notifications:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                                                     │
│   ____                  _                                                                           │
│  / ___|  ___ _ ____   _(_) ___ ___  ___                                                             │
│  \___ \ / _ \ '__\ \ / / |/ __/ _ \/ __|                                       ┌────────────────────┼──┐
│   ___) |  __/ |   \ V /| | (_|  __/\__ \                                       │                    │  │
│  |____/ \___|_|    \_/ |_|\___\___||___/                                       │                    │  │   ┌─────────────────┐
│                                                                     Chain                           │  │   │External Services│
│                                                                     - Blocks      ━━━━━━━━━━━━┓     │  │   │                 │
│                 ┌────subscribe (incoming or outgoing tx status)───▶ - Transactions            ┃     │  │   │  Local node     │
│                 │                                                                             ┃     │  │   │                 │
│                 │                                                                             ┃     │  │   │  Alchemy        │
│                 │                                                                             ┃     │  ├───▶                 │
│                 │                                                    Indexing                 ┃     │  │   │  BlockNative    │
│                 │                                                    - Accounts               ┃     │  │   │                 │
│                 │                                                    - ERC-20 balances    ━━━━╋─────┼──┘   │  CoinGecko      │
│                 ├───subscribe (eg balance changes), get balances───▶ - ERC-721 ownership      ┃     │      │                 │
│                 │                                                    - Governance proposals   ┃     │      │                 │
│                 │                                                    - On-chain prices        ┃     │      └─────────────────┘
│                 │                                                                             ┃     │
│                 │                                                                             ┃     │      ┌────────────────┐
│                 │                                                   Keyring                   ┃     │      │                │
│                 ├──────list accounts, sign tx, sign message───────▶ - Native  ────────────────╋─────┼──────▶   Extension    │
│                 │                                                   - Remote                  ┃     │      │  Storage API   │
│      ┌──────────┴──────────┐                                                                  ┃     │      │                │
│      │                     │                                                                  ┃     │      └────────────────┘
│      │                     │                                                                  ┃     │
│      │     Wallet API      │──────┐                                 Preferences  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫     │
│      │                     │      │                                                           ┃     │      ┌────────────────┐
│      │                     │      │                                                           ┃     │      │                │
│      └──────────▲──────────┘      │                                 Notifications             ┃     │      │                │
│                 │                 │                                 - Ephemeral               ┣━━━━━╋━━━━━━▶   IndexedDB    │
│                 │                 └──────pull and subscribe───────▶ - Application      ━━━━━━━┛     │      │                │
│                 │                                                   - Security-critical             │      │                │
│             subscribe                                                          │                    │      └────────────────┘
│              and get                                                           │                    │
│                 │                                                              │                    │
│                 │                                                            push                   │
│                 │                                                              │                    │
└─────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────────┐                             ┌───────────────▼───────────────┐
│                                  │                             │                               │
│                                  │                             │                               │
│         Wallet interface         │                             │     Browser notifications     │
│                                  │                             │                               │
│                                  │                             │                               │
└──────────────────────────────────┘                             └───────────────────────────────┘
                   ┌───────────────┐
                   │               │
                   │ Internal dApp │
                   │               │
                   └───────────────┘
                   ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
                   │ Earn │ │ Swap │
                   └──────┘ └──────┘

File Structure

Extension content lives directly under the root directory alongside project-level configuration and utilities, including GitHub-specific functionality in .github. Extension content should be minimal, and largely simply glue together UI and wallet code. Manifest information is managed in the manifest/ subdirectory as described below.

Here is a light guide to the directory structure:

.github/ # GitHub-specific tooling

package.json      # private extension package
webpack.config.js # Webpack build for extension

src/ # extension source files
  background.js # entry file for the background extension script; should be
                # minimal and call in to @tallyho/tally-wallet
  ui.js         # entry file for the frontend UI; should be minimal and bind
                # the functionality in @tallyho/tally-ui

dist/ # output directory for builds
  brave/   # browser-specific
  firefox/ # build
  chrome/  # directories
  brave.zip   # browser-specific
  firefox.zip # production
  chrome.zip  # bundles

build-utils/ # build-related helpers, used in webpack.config.js
  *.js
dev-utils/          # dev-mode helpers for the extension
  extension-reload.js # LiveReload support for the extension.
manifest/         # extension manifest data
  manifest.json             # common manifest data for all browsers
  manifest.chrome.json      # manifest adjustments for Chrome
  manifest.dev.json         # manifest adjustments for dev environment
  manifest.firefox.dev.json # manifest adjustments for Firefox in dev

ui/ # @tallyho/tally-ui package
  package.json

wallet/ # @tallyho/tally-wallet package with trusted wallet core
  package.json