Estimate Tezos Transaction Fees In Taquito Without Signer

Hey guys! Ever found yourself in a situation where you need to estimate transaction fees on the Tezos blockchain using Taquito, but you're stuck because it's asking for a signer? It's a common head-scratcher, especially when you're just trying to get a sense of the costs involved before committing to a transaction. The good news is, you absolutely can estimate fees without initializing a signer. Let's dive into how to do this, why it's important, and some of the nuances you might encounter along the way.

Why Estimate Transaction Fees?

Before we get into the how-to, let's quickly touch on why estimating transaction fees is crucial. In the Tezos world, like many other blockchains, every transaction incurs a fee. This fee covers the computational cost of processing the transaction and ensures the network remains secure and efficient. Estimating these fees beforehand allows you to:

• Budget your transactions: Knowing the approximate cost helps you decide if a transaction is economically viable, especially when dealing with smaller amounts.
• Optimize gas limits: Tezos uses a gas limit to cap the amount of computational resources a transaction can consume. Estimating fees helps you set an appropriate gas limit, avoiding overpayment or transaction failure.
• Provide a better user experience: If you're building a dApp, displaying estimated fees upfront gives your users transparency and avoids unexpected costs. It's all about keeping things smooth and user-friendly!

Estimating transaction fees accurately is a cornerstone of responsible blockchain interaction. It empowers you to make informed decisions, manage your resources effectively, and contribute to a more sustainable and predictable network environment. The ability to foresee costs prevents unpleasant surprises and allows for strategic planning, whether you're a developer optimizing a decentralized application or an individual user making transactions.

Moreover, in decentralized applications (dApps), transparent fee estimation plays a pivotal role in enhancing user trust and satisfaction. Users are more likely to engage with a dApp that provides clear cost expectations, as this transparency reduces the risk of unexpected charges. This trust is crucial for fostering a healthy ecosystem around your application. By providing fee estimates, you're essentially giving your users the power to control their financial interactions within your platform. This empowerment leads to a more positive user experience and encourages greater participation within the network.

In the grand scheme of blockchain technology, fee estimation contributes significantly to network stability and predictability. When users can accurately predict transaction costs, they can better manage their resources and avoid unnecessary congestion on the network. This efficiency translates to faster transaction processing times and lower overall costs for everyone involved. Additionally, accurate fee estimation helps to discourage malicious actors from spamming the network with low-value transactions, thereby maintaining the integrity and security of the blockchain.

The Challenge: The Signer Requirement

Now, let's address the elephant in the room: the signer requirement. When using Taquito's Tezos.estimate.transfer() function, you might notice that it typically expects a signer to be initialized. A signer is essentially an object that can cryptographically sign transactions, proving that the transaction is authorized by the owner of the Tezos account. This is a critical security feature, as it prevents unauthorized transactions from being executed. However, for mere estimation purposes, involving a signer can feel like overkill. You're not actually trying to execute a transaction; you just want to know how much it would cost. So, how do we bypass this?

The signer's role in the transaction process is inherently linked to the act of authorizing and securing the transaction on the blockchain. It acts as a digital signature, verifying that the transaction originates from the legitimate account holder and that the transaction's details have not been tampered with during transmission. This level of security is paramount when dealing with the transfer of assets or the execution of smart contract operations, as it ensures the integrity and immutability of the blockchain's records. The requirement for a signer is thus a fundamental aspect of blockchain's security model, designed to protect users and the network from fraud and unauthorized access.

However, when it comes to the preliminary stage of estimating transaction costs, the need for a fully initialized signer can present a hurdle. The process of setting up a signer typically involves handling private keys, which requires careful management and secure storage practices. In scenarios where the user simply wants to get an idea of the potential costs before committing to a transaction, the overhead of initializing a signer can seem excessive. This is particularly true in applications where fee estimation is a routine operation, such as in cryptocurrency wallets or decentralized exchanges. The challenge, therefore, lies in finding a balance between maintaining the security standards of the blockchain and providing a user-friendly and efficient fee estimation mechanism.

The Solution: Using a Mock Signer or an Injected Signer abstraction

The key to estimating fees without a full-fledged signer lies in using mock signer or leveraging injected signer abstraction. Taquito provides flexibility by allowing you to use a mock signer for estimation purposes. A mock signer is essentially a stand-in that mimics the behavior of a real signer without actually requiring a private key. This allows you to construct the transaction parameters and pass them to the estimate function without the overhead of setting up a secure signer.

Another approach is to use an injected signer abstraction. Taquito's flexibility shines here, as it allows you to interact with signers provided by browser extensions like Temple or Kukai. These injected signers handle the signing process securely within the extension, so your application doesn't need to manage private keys directly. For estimation, you can often use the injected signer to prepare the transaction parameters, but the actual signing won't occur until the user approves it in their wallet. This approach gives you a more realistic estimate because it considers the actual signing environment, but it still avoids the need for a fully initialized signer during the estimation phase.

The mock signer is particularly useful in development and testing environments, where the focus is on functionality rather than security. By using a mock signer, developers can rapidly iterate on their applications and test various scenarios without the complexities of managing real keys and accounts. This accelerates the development process and allows for more efficient debugging and optimization. The injected signer abstraction, on the other hand, bridges the gap between development and production, providing a means to simulate real-world user interactions while still adhering to security best practices. This approach is especially valuable for applications that need to estimate fees accurately in the context of a user's actual wallet setup.

Practical Example: Code Snippets

Okay, let's get our hands dirty with some code! Here's how you can estimate fees using a mock signer in Taquito:

import { TezosToolkit, MichelsonMap } from '@taquito/taquito';
import { InMemorySigner } from '@taquito/signer';

// Initialize TezosToolkit
const tezos = new TezosToolkit('https://YOUR_TEZOS_RPC_URL');

// Use a mock signer
tezos.setProvider({ signer: new InMemorySigner('edskRqrEPQt3awgGtPWSmwMkEwUnVhmf6KcxxjpX9Voc2EDABqKjQmK5MZXg6XipNXmPdUsu4mQRykFm6egiQRKGVgt5jSy2d') });

async function estimateFees() {
  try {
    // Parameters for the transfer
    const transferParams = {
      to: 'tz1...', // Replace with a valid Tezos address
      amount: 1,
    };

    // Estimate the transfer operation
    const estimated = await tezos.estimate.transfer(transferParams);

    console.log(`Estimated cost: ${estimated.suggestedFeeMutez} mutez`);
    console.log(`Gas limit: ${estimated.gasLimit}`);
    console.log(`Storage limit: ${estimated.storageLimit}`);

  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Error estimating fees:', error);
  }
}

estimateFees();

In this example, we're using InMemorySigner as our mock signer. It's initialized with a seed phrase, but keep in mind that this is just for estimation purposes. Never use a real private key in a mock signer! We then use tezos.estimate.transfer() to get the estimated fees, gas limit, and storage limit for a sample transfer transaction. Remember to replace `