I was unable to find any relevant documentation for the now
keyword within the Solidity documentation, other than its usage in examples. What exactly does the now
keyword return, how is it determined and what are the associated gas costs? I assume it is similar to Unix time.
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Related: ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/15747/…– Richard HorrocksJul 4, 2017 at 10:17
1 Answer
In short now
is just an alias for block.timestamp
and it is the number of seconds since the Epoch as per documentation.
Beware that this value is set by miners so there is a little potential for a malicious manipulation but general nodes are meant to coordinate.
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2Update: Solidity 0.7.0 deprecated the
now
keyword. For contracts ^0.7.0, you must useblock.timestamp
. Jul 1, 2020 at 16:51