Gas Optimization in Perpetual Trading Contracts
Practical techniques for optimizing gas usage in complex DeFi perpetual trading contracts, with real examples from production systems.
Share your practical experience optimizing gas usage in perpetual trading contracts at Opyn.
Why Gas Optimization Matters for Perpetuals
What to write about:
- How gas costs impact user experience and adoption
- Specific gas cost challenges with perpetual contracts
- User behavior patterns and how gas affects trading frequency
- Competitive advantage of efficient contracts
- Real numbers from your experience
Explain why gas optimization is particularly critical for perpetual trading and provide context with real usage data.
Storage Layout Optimization
What to write about:
- How you structured contract storage for efficiency
- Packing multiple values into single storage slots
- Trade-offs between gas and code readability
- Specific examples from your perpetual contracts
- Storage vs memory vs calldata decisions
Show concrete examples of how you optimized storage layout in your contracts.
// Example of optimized storage packing
struct Position {
uint128 size; // 16 bytes
uint64 entryPrice; // 8 bytes
uint32 timestamp; // 4 bytes
uint16 leverage; // 2 bytes
bool isLong; // 1 byte
// Total: 31 bytes (fits in 1 storage slot)
}
Function-Level Optimizations
What to write about:
- Specific optimization techniques you used
- Loop optimization strategies
- Avoiding expensive operations (SSTORE, external calls)
- Batch operations and their implementation
- Error handling optimization
- View vs pure function considerations
Provide specific examples of function optimizations with before/after comparisons.
Assembly and Low-Level Optimizations
What to write about:
- When and why you used inline assembly
- Specific assembly optimizations you implemented
- Safety considerations when using assembly
- Performance gains you achieved
- Team code review practices for assembly code
Share examples of assembly optimizations while emphasizing safety practices.
Optimizing Oracle and External Calls
What to write about:
- Caching oracle prices vs fresh calls
- Batching multiple oracle updates
- Optimizing Chainlink integration
- External call patterns that save gas
- Error handling for failed external calls
Discuss how you optimized interactions with price oracles and other external contracts.
Batch Operations and User Experience
What to write about:
- Implementing batch trading functions
- Gas savings from batching multiple operations
- User interface considerations for batch operations
- Trade-offs between flexibility and efficiency
- How batching affects liquidations and settlements
Explain how you designed batch operations to improve both gas efficiency and user experience.
Testing and Measuring Gas Usage
What to write about:
- Tools you use for gas profiling
- Testing frameworks and gas reporting
- Benchmarking against competitors
- Regression testing for gas usage
- Continuous monitoring in production
Share your approach to measuring, testing, and monitoring gas usage.
Production Results and Learnings
What to write about:
- Specific gas savings you achieved
- User behavior changes after optimizations
- Unexpected optimization opportunities you discovered
- Optimizations that backfired or had unintended consequences
- Balancing optimization with code maintainability
Provide real results from your optimization efforts and lessons learned.
Include actual code examples, gas measurements, and specific techniques you've used in production. Make this a practical guide that other smart contract developers can immediately apply.