WTF

[ben-chain]

So it appears that if the eth_call's value argument is greater than the from argument's current balance, it behaves as if the from's balance was origBalance + (value - origBalance) * 2. Bizarre... logs are:

initialSenderBalance
BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18f000', _isBigNumber: true }
moreValue:
BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18f064', _isBigNumber: true }
lessValue:
BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18ef9c', _isBigNumber: true }
msg.value, msg.sender.balance (eth_call with EQUAL value than the account has:
[
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18f000', _isBigNumber: true },
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x00', _isBigNumber: true }
]
msg.value, msg.sender.balance (eth_call with 0x64 LESS value than the account has:
[
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18ef9c', _isBigNumber: true },
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x64', _isBigNumber: true }
]
msg.value, msg.sender.balance (eth_call with 0x64 MORE value than the account has:
[
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x021e19de4c7e5f18f064', _isBigNumber: true },
  BigNumber { _hex: '0x64', _isBigNumber: true }
]

[ben-chain]

Whoops, this was meant to be a personal PR. My bad folks 😅

[alcuadrado]

Wait, but does hardhat network behave like that?

[ben-chain]

It does appear to be working in this weird way in JS tests, yes. I am not sure what the correct behavior for eth_call is supposed to be if the value param exceeds the from's balance. I am trying to get it right for the OVM geth node and I quickly went here to check what the behavior--did I just find a bug/is this the wrong behavior?

[smartcontracts]

How is eth_call supposed to behave if the value > the account's balance?

[smartcontracts]

A brief look at Geth makes me think an eth_call should revert if value > account balance. Would need to be confirmed with a test though.

[ben-chain]

I looked into this a bit; both infura and remix throw errors.

[fvictorio]

I can confirm that geth throws an "insufficient funds for intrinsic transaction cost" error and that hardhat doesn't. I opened NomicFoundation/hardhat#1529 to track this.

[alcuadrado]

I had no idea that was the expected behavior. Makes sense. It's simpler to implement with that restriction.

BTW, @ben-chain @smartcontracts you may find this interesting: ethereum/execution-specs#35 -- There's an ongoing effort to standardized the JSON-RPC interface, including this kind of edge cases. It's just starting, but I guess it can be useful for you.