More than 100 projects are now in the Chainlink Automation ecosystem, helping bring reliable and decentralized automation to a wide variety of use cases. Web3 developers have used the automated smart contract execution made possible by Chainlink Automation to invent entirely new experiences for their users and reduce their DevOps overhead by an order of magnitude.

Today, we are happy to announce seven exciting Chainlink Automation features to help Web3 developers build faster, off-load increasingly complex automation challenges off-chain to save money and resources, and benefit from the improved security of the Chainlink Automation Network.

These features are available in the latest version (v1.2) of Chainlink Automation on Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Fantom, Polygon, and accompanying testnets and are accessible via the Chainlink Automation App or by directly interacting with the Automation registry on-chain. All new Upkeeps created in the UI will automatically be created in the new version, providing immediate benefits to users.

For examples of how Chainlink Automation can help you move faster, check out the Chainlink Automation Documentation. 

New Features

1. Immediate mainnet approvals to accelerate innovation

Developers can now innovate faster as all new registry v1.2 Upkeeps are automatically approved. With automatic approvals, it is highly recommended that developers optimize and test their contracts before launching on mainnet to ensure expected behavior. For best practices, refer to the Automation best practices documentation, which will be updated over time with more information.

2. Full programmatic control of your Upkeeps from within your dApps

Users can now dynamically create, manage, and fund Upkeeps from their dApps, and an Upkeep can even fund itself during execution. To learn more about how you can programmatically create Upkeeps, please read the documentation.

3. Advanced turn-taking algorithm for high-frequency execution

Developers looking to automate functions that trigger with high frequency will benefit from the redesigned turn-taking algorithm, which can reliably execute even the most demanding functions while retaining the strong security and reliability features of the previous algorithm. Combined with the battle-tested transaction manager, Automation can get developers’ transactions confirmed even during periods of heavy congestion and chain reorgs.

4. Durable ID and easy migration for faster access to new Chainlink Automation features

All v1.2 registry Upkeeps now have durable Upkeep IDs, enabling the provision of a user-triggered migration feature so that Upkeeps can be easily moved from one registry to the next to benefit from new feature releases.

5. Configurable Upkeeps for better gas optimization

Developers can now configure the gas limit of their Upkeeps, allowing them to better tailor it to the needs of their automation task without having to create new Upkeeps to do so.

6. Off-chain computation improvements to reduce costs from logical errors

Chainlink Automation now has an improved off-chain simulation process to get a high-fidelity representation of gas and logic before transactions are submitted on-chain. This helps reduce reverts, saving users money.

7. Minimum Upkeep requirement

As part of the mission to continuously enhance the security of the Chainlink Network for all participants, each registered Upkeep will have a minimum spend requirement of 0.1 LINK to discourage network spam. Important note: an Upkeep is the automation job itself–it is not a transaction. Each Upkeep can have thousands of transactions. If an Upkeep has not spent more than 0.1 LINK on transactions at the time of cancellation, then 0.1 LINK will be retained for the network. If more than 0.1 LINK has been spent by an Upkeep, the full remaining balance of the Upkeep will be withdrawable when the Upkeep is canceled. 

Summary

With these seven Chainlink Automation upgrades, Web3 developers can innovate faster, offload increasingly complex automation challenges off-chain to save money, and benefit from improved network security.

To learn why more than 100 projects rely on Chainlink Automation for their smart contract execution, visit chain.link/automation. To get started with Chainlink Automation, check out the Developer docs or the Automation App.