Use Local Memory Type Variable Instead of Global Storage Type Variable in Event to Save Gas

[Ether1oop]

Hi, we recently have conducted a systematic study about Solidity event usage, evolution, and impact, and we are attempting to build a tool to improve the practice of Solidity event use based on our findings. We have tried our prototype tool on some of the most popular GitHub Solidity repositories, and for your repository, we find a potential optimization of gas consumption arisen from event use.

The point is that when we use emit operation to store the value of a certain variable, local memory type variable would be preferable to global storage type (state) variable if they hold the same value. The reason is that an extra SLOAD operation would be needed to access the variable if it is storage type, and the SLOAD operation costs 800 gas.

For your repository, we find that the following event use can be improved:

• staking-rewards.sol
  function name: setRewardsDuration
  event name:  RewardsDurationUpdated
  variable:    rewardsDuration->_rewardsDuration

    function setRewardsDuration(uint256 _rewardsDuration) external onlyOwner {
        require(
            block.timestamp > periodFinish,
            "Previous rewards period must be complete before changing the duration for the new period"
        );
        rewardsDuration = _rewardsDuration;
        emit RewardsDurationUpdated(rewardsDuration);
    }

Do you find our results useful? Your reply and invaluable suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and are vital for improving our tool. Thanks a lot for your time!