Signatures typically use v
to store the signature and r
,s
to store the hashed data. I agree that using ecrecover adds extra complexity and by adding approve/transferFrom we get a bit of anonymity because we allow a 3rd party to extract tokens from our balance for a fee, usually in WETH or something similar.
People say that if we use signatures
we become anonymous
which is totally false since nothing is truly hidden on ethereum. More on that topic you can find out from here: https://medium.com/swlh/ethereum-aint-hiding-your-secrets-703e89088937
Signatures are more broadly used to identify the user that use Metamask. We make our user sign something that either contains a source of random entropy or has already been secretly hashed with our private key and provide after that we check who the author of the new signature is and provide a temporarily session using ecrecover.
The exact approach can be found here:
https://programtheblockchain.com/posts/2018/02/17/signing-and-verifying-messages-in-ethereum/
Also if you want a better & more detailed approach to signatures you can find our more by looking at how DreamTeamToken made their implementation here: https://etherscan.io/address/0x82f4ded9cec9b5750fbff5c2185aee35afc16587#code
It should be easy to update to Solidity 0.5 , if you have any struggles regarding this please let me know.