EIP-1109: Remove call costs for precompiled contracts

EIPS/eip-1109.md

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+---
+eip: 1109
+title: Remove CALL costs for precompiled contracts
+author: Jordi Baylina (@jbaylina)
+discussions-to: [email protected]
+status: Draft
+type: Core
+created: 2018-05-22
+---
+
+## Simple Summary
+
+This EIP removes the gas costs of the CALL-like opcodes when calling precompiled contracts.
+
+## Abstract
+
+This EIP tries to resolve the problem of high gas consumption when calling precompiled contracts with a small gas cost. Setting the gas costs to 0 when calling a precompiled  contract allows to define precompiled contracts whose effective cost when calling it is less than 700.
+
+## Motivation
+
+Each precompiled contract has an already defined a cost for calling it. It does not make sense to add the implicit extra gas cost of the CALL opcode.
+
+As an example, SHA256 precompiled contract costs 60 and ECADD costs 500 (proposed to costs only 50 in [EIP1108](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/1108) . When a precompiled contract is called, 700 gas is consumed just for the CALL opcode besides the costs of the precompiled contract.
+
+This makes no sense, and right now it's impossible to define a precompiled contract whose effective cost for using it is less than 700.
+
+## Specification
+
+If `block.number >= XXXXX`, for each CALL, DELEGATECALL and CALLCODE opcode with a destination address < 256 use a Gcall (basic cost of the call) of 0  instead of 700.
+
+The cost of the CALL opcode is calculated in exactly the same way that any normal call, including the cost for using a value different than 0 and for creating a new account. The only difference is that Gcall is not added when calculating Cextra.
+
+## Rationale
+
+This implementation is the one that needs less modification of the clients.
+
+## Backwards Compatibility
+
+This EIP is backwards compatible.  Smart contracts that call precompiled contracts will cost less from now on. Smart contracts that relay in a high gas consumption for a specific code are not expected.
+
+## Test Cases
+
+- Normal call to a defined smart contract.
+- Call to undefined smart contract.
+- Call to defined smart contract with a value!=0 on the call.
+- Call to undefined smart contract with a value!=0 on the call.
+- Normal call with remaining gas<700 but gas>[the cost of the call].
+
+## Implementation
+
+Not implemented yet.
+
+## Copyright
+Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).