TODO: This doc should be moved to the phylax-monitor repo eventually

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Introduction

The Phylax Monitor is a new way of monitoring your smart contracts. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make monitoring easier and more intuitive for developers. We’ve built the Monitor to be a powerful tool that helps you keep track of your contracts and alerts you when something goes wrong. Some of the problems that led us to build the Monitor are:

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Existing tools are too rigid or not expressive enough

  • Alert definitions must be written in a language that is different from the language the contracts and tests are written in
  • Existing incident-response tooling may not support the user’s desired workflows
  • The user can access some insights for some contract code but cannot connect it to metrics

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Abstraction level does not match the user’s needs

  • The user cannot gain insight into their app or protocol on an ongoing basis due to limitations on pricing, rate-limiting, richness
  • An existing solution may be too simple for the user’s use case; it is not extendable or customizable
  • An existing solution may be too complex for a user that is just starting out, leading them to give up

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Events don’t emit information that the user needs

  • Data from events are not structured in a manner that provides insight about the app’s performance and reliability over time

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How is the Phylax Monitor solving this?

First and foremost the Phylax Monitor is meant to feel intuitive and familiar to use from the get to. Anyone who is familiar with Foundry cheatcodes will feel right at home, since the Monitor uses cheatcodes, and hence, Solidity to create assertions and alerts for EVM state. This means users don’t have to waste time learning a new language or tool before they can start monitoring their contracts and prevent millions of dollars being lost.

It is possible to configure multiple different notification methods, so that users can be alerted in the way that suits them best. The way that an alert is triggered is by running assertions on the EVM state of each new block for the contracts that are being monitored. If an assertion fails an alert will be triggered and the user will be notified. Futhermore it’s possible to setup actions that will be carried out when an alert is triggered. An action is a presigned transaction that will be executed on the user’s behalf when an alert is triggered. This could for example be a transaction that pauses a smart contract or disables certain features to prevent further damage.

The Phylax Monitor also provides a dashboard where users can see the status of their contracts and alerts in real-time. The dashboard can show charts that are written in Solidity. The data shown is the data that the user defines as being is important to the user and their dApp.

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Why should you use the Phylax Monitor?

In a nutshell, the Phylax Monitor is a powerful, customizable and intuitive tool that allow users to monitor the state of their contracts as well as reacting if their contracts are in an undesired state.

You should use the Phylax Monitor if you want to:

  • Monitor the state of your contracts in real-time
  • Be alerted when something goes wrong
  • Write assertions and charts in a language you are already familiar with
  • Be able to react with presigned transactions when an alert is triggered
Quickstart