external call to non-existing address returns success

Question

I have this simple contracts which forwards the calldata to and external contract:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.13;

contract AccountTest {

    /**
     * execute a transaction (called directly from owner, or by entryPoint)
     */
    function execute(address dest, uint256 value, bytes calldata func) external {
        call(dest, value, func);
    }


    function call(address target, uint256 value, bytes memory data) internal {
        (bool success, bytes memory result) = target.call{value : value}(data);
        if (!success) {
            assembly {
                revert(add(result, 32), mload(result))
            }
        }
    }

And then I deployed it and called execute with a non-existing address in my local dev node:

  const walletContract = await ethers.getContractFactory("AccountTest");
  let factory = await walletContract.deploy();
  await factory.waitForDeployment();
  let tx = await factory.execute("0x1f9090aae28b8a3dceadf281b0f12828e676c326", 0, "0x");
  let r = await tx.wait()
  console.log(r.status == 1 ? "success" : "fail")

What I expect is that the tx should be reverted, and the status should be fail, but on the contrary, it returns success, and tx is not reverted.

I try to search for documents of the underlying behavior of CALL but didn't get a clue.

Does anyone knows why this is? Thanks!

Answer 1

That's a normal behavior.

This is because low level calls returns true if the address doesn't exist or even if you passed a zero address.

That's why it is always recommended to put checks for zero addresses before any low level call.