TRON Tailored Smart Wallets

TRON Smart Contract Wallets

Learn how to deploy and manage Smart Wallets on TRON

Introduction

Smart wallets in Web3 aim to tackle some long-lasting issues within the Web3 ecosystem:

Complexity of Key Management: In traditional Web3 setups, users manage private keys or seed phrases to access their crypto wallets. These are hard to remember, easy to lose, and a nightmare if stolen. Smart wallets leverage smart contracts (“contract wallets”) to abstract this complexity. They enable features like social recovery (where trusted contacts can help regain access) or multi-signature authentication, reducing the burden on users to safeguard cryptic strings.

User Experience (UX) Friction: Web3 onboarding is notoriously clunky — installing browser extensions, signing transactions manually, and dealing with gas fees confuse newcomers. Smart wallets aim to streamline this by integrating account abstraction (e.g., Ethereum’s ERC-4337 standard). This allows users to interact with dApps more seamlessly, batch transactions, or even pay gas fees in tokens other than ETH, making the experience closer to Web2 simplicity.

Security Vulnerabilities: Traditional wallets are single points of failure — lose your key and funds; get phished, and it’s game over. Smart wallets introduce programmable security layers. For instance, they can enforce spending limits, require multiple approvals for significant transactions, or freeze assets if suspicious activity is detected, all coded into the wallet’s smart contract logic.

Interoperability and Control: Web3 envisions a decentralized internet where users own their data and assets. Yet, interacting across blockchains or dApps often requires juggling multiple wallets or tools. Smart wallets aim to unify this by supporting cross-chain functionality and giving users granular control over permissions — like revoking a dApp’s access to funds without exposing everything.

Cost and Accessibility: Gas fees and network congestion can lock out users, especially in developing regions. Smart wallets can optimize transactions (e.g., via meta-transactions where someone else pays the gas) or integrate Layer 2 solutions, lowering costs and making Web3 more inclusive.

Concept Explanation

Let’s start with some comparison between the TRON and EVM account models.

In Ethereum and other EVM chains, Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) do not have multi-sign and paymaster capabilities enabled by default. Developers must find creative ways to allow such features through Account Abstraction, a popular one being ERC-4337.

In TRON, paymaster and multi-sign features are included by default as part of EOAs; however, there are still some interesting use cases for Smart Wallets, especially for wallets, payments platforms, eCommerce, and CEXs.

So, why would you need a Smart Wallet if an EOA in TRON can even have multi-sign capabilities by default?

1. Gas Sponsorship (TRON Resources Inheritance): In TRON, the contract deployer can assign itself as a paymaster with configurable sponsorship ratio (0% to 100%)
2. Eliminate Account activation fixed cost: In TRON, you need 1.1 TRX to activate an EOA; creating Smart Wallets could be free, provided the contract deployer has enough energy.
3. Energy delegation simplicity for payments: Instead of dynamically delegating resources to individual wallets for asset withdrawals, you can delegate energy to a single wallet (deployer account) and enjoy sponsored transactions for all, reducing Bandwidth costs and infrastructure complexity.

Step-by-Step Implementation

For this tutorial, we will use Tronbox for our smart contract test and deployment. If you haven’t used Tronbox before, we suggest reading the docs for further information and a proper introduction to the tool.

Setup and Config

Let’s clone the project using git and install its dependencies. It is advisable to use a disposable private key only for development and testing.

For mainnet deployment, it is advisable to delegate/rent energy to your deployer account to enhance security.

Please open your favorite coding IDE and a terminal window. Let’s begin!

Warning: Never use your main wallet private key for development purposes, especially if you share your code on the Internet! .env file leaks during code pushes might occur.

git clone https://github.com/simbadMarino/tron-smartWallets.git # Clone this repo

cd tron-smartWallets # Open the project repository in a terminal

cp .env.sample .env # Create your own .env file and fill it out to configure deployment environment

yarn install | npm install # Install dependencies

SC Review & Deployment

After dependencies are installed we are ready to explore our project structure:

The contracts folder holds three different contracts, each varying in features. Different contracts per SmartWallet are meant to adapt to each use case.

Let’s describe each of them:

Simple Smart Wallet Contract (SSWC)

Goal:

Replace current throw-away EOAs model from payments platform to reduce energy delegation and token transfer complexity while keeping a minimal feature set for deployment cost reduction.

Deployment cost:

159K energy (can be improved by implementing a Contract Factory & changing owner public storage variable to internal)

Use cases:

• Throw away wallets for payments
• USDT / TRC20 custodial wallets

Smart Wallet TRC20 TRX (SWTRXC)

Goal:

Replace current EOAs model for payments platforms to reduce energy delegation and token transfer complexity, including a TRX withdrawal feature for increased security (in case of accidental TRX deposits) and functionality.

Deployment cost:

219K energy (can be improved by implementing a Contract Factory & changing owner public storage variable to internal)

Use cases:

• USDT / TRC20 / TRX custodial wallets
• EOA replacement for non-single use cases, limited to simple transfers

Smart Wallet Featured (SWFEAT)

Goal:

Replace EOAs model for wallet management, reducing energy delegation and token transfer complexity, eventually, this solution could be enhanced to support ERC-4337 features.

Deployment cost:

250k energy, not recommended for single-use cases.

Use cases:

• USDT / TRC20 / TRX custodial and non-custodial wallet management solutions.
• TRON Account Abstraction solution (still need to add further features)

The migrations folder contains migration/deployment instructions for each smartWallet.

The test folder contains basic “Happy Path” tests examples so you can experience with mocha testing for smart contracts.

The tronbox.js file contains network information and Solidity compiler configuration. It is advisable to open and review it before deploying any contract.

The .env file contains critical environment variables for deployment and testing. Please use the comments notes and edit as necessary

First, we will compile the contracts. If any issues arise, note them and make sure no dependencies are missing.

Note: You are assumed to already have TRX testnet tokens. If not, please visit Nile Faucet or Shasta Faucet.

After compiling succeeds, the next step is to deploy our contracts. By default, all contracts under the contracts folder will be deployed. If you want to skip a particular smartWallet deploymen,t please comment on the ```deployer.deploy(***);``` line or adapt the migration script to your needs.

Refer to the following commands for compiling and deployment:

tronbox compile #Compile your Smart Contracts using tronbox

tronbox migrate — network nile #Deploy the active contracts under the migrations directory, modify the prefered deployment network as needed

After deployment, you can use:

https://nile.tronscan.org/#/

OR

https://shasta.tronscan.org/#/

OR

https://tronscan.org/#/

Depending on which network you deployed, look for your newly created smart wallet!

Testing

With Chai, you can quickly test your deployed smart contracts. Currently, a test suit per contract has been created.

Before running the following tests, make sure you have filled out the deployed contract addresses as well as the TRC20 token you will be using for the tests in your .env file

Note: Extending test cases is advised if you are deploying this Smart wallets to production.

npx mocha test/simpleSmartWallet.test.js #Run the simpleSmartWallet contract test suit

npx mocha test/smartWalletTRC20TRX.test.js #Run the smartWalletTRC20TRX contract test suit

npx mocha test/smartWalletFeatured.test.js #Run the smartWalletFeatured contract test suit

Troubleshooting & Best Practices

• Security: Never use your main Crypto wallet to deploy contracts. It is preferred to delegate or rent energy for mainnet deployments.
• Network Glitches: Occasionally, network issues may cause transient errors (e.g., “ERROR: No contract or not a valid smart contract”). Simply rerun the test if such errors occur.
• Verification: After deployment, you can verify transactions on the Nile block explorer to confirm that your contracts are live.

Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways:

• TRON Accounts have multi-sign capabilities by default, but Smart Wallets offer additional features like:

1. Contract creator’s energy sharing
2. Eliminate account activation costs,
3. Simplify Resource management for payment platforms.

• Three different Smart Wallet contracts are provided, each tailored to specific use cases.

1. The Simple Smart Wallet Contract is suitable for throw-away wallets and custodial wallet services.
2. The Smart Wallet TRC20-TRX (SWTRXC) includes a TRX withdrawal feature for increased security and functionality.
3. The Smart Wallet Featured (SWFEAT) supports more complex features and can be used for custodial and non-custodial wallet management solutions.

• Make sure to have enough TRX testnet tokens before deploying contracts.
• After this tutorial, you should be able to build on top of the provided Smart Contracts and add more features to them.

Conclusion.

When it comes to operational simplicity, smart wallets on TRON are a great way to avoid constantly delegating resources and/or activating accounts on behalf of third parties. The solution proposed here addresses a common use case for online payment and general wallet management.

If you’d like to examine the final code, you can visit our GitHub repository.

Happy coding!!