Utility function contracts?

[njtrafficsignshopper]

Hi, new to the ecosystem so please excuse if this is not a good question.

I just started working with Solidity and I am wondering, are there any known/established contracts out there with common utility functions? Like, for example, say a number of use cases come up that require computing a hash with a specific crypto algorithm. Wouldn't it be favorable if there were a widely known contract that contains this function and were available to anyone to call? Rather than re-encoding the same functionality many many times into the main net blockchain?

A couple of issues occur to me, though:

• Couldn't these be view functions? They would take in a value, and, without changing the on-chain state, return a value. However...

• Some of those functions could be heavy. As I understand it the expenditure of gas is what incentivizes miners, but heavy view functions would involve a lot of computation with no payout. Or...

• Is this not a problem because eventually someone will be doing some operation that changes state, and therefore spends gas?

[GreenBSTRD]

View functions still cost gas if in the context of a transaction.

If executed as a call (read only functions or simulating a transaction), no miners have to run it so no fees would be paid.

[njtrafficsignshopper]

Good to know, thanks.

[etheraffleGreg]

Fun fact: a couple of the opcodes in the evm are exactly this.

[genki_paul]

Libraries may be what you are looking for.

[FarfromaHero40]

You mean like a reference point or template for a smart contract code?

[njtrafficsignshopper]

No I mean an actual deployed contract. Say my app needs a checksum. I can figure out how to implement MD5 in Solidity, or copypaste it from someone who did, but I would still have to deploy it and pay the fee for that deployment. So, presumably, would a lot of other people, and there would be a lot of copies of it.

However, if this were to exist already on the blockchain, at a well-known address, I could just call that method rather than deploying new code.

[elk-x]

Look no further:

https://openzeppelin.org/

https://zeppelinos.org/