User decryption delegation

Delegation lets one account (the delegator) authorize another account (the delegate) to perform user decryption on its behalf, in the context of a specific contract. The ACL stores user decryption permissions as (user, contractAddress) pairs; delegation transfers the rights of (delegator, contractAddress) to (delegate, contractAddress).

Who is the delegator?

It depends on which API you call:

Caller	API	Delegator (msg.sender to ACL)
EOA (Externally Owned Account)	IACL.delegateForUserDecryption directly on the ACL contract	the EOA itself
Smart contract	FHE.delegateUserDecryption from inside a contract function	address(this)

FHE.delegateUserDecryption cannot be used by an EOA to delegate its own rights — the EOA must call the ACL directly.

Constraints

The ACL enforces three invariants when registering a delegation:

• msg.sender != contractAddress

• msg.sender != delegate

• delegate != contractAddress

Plus a one-delegate-or-revoke-per-block rule per (delegator, delegate, contractAddress) tuple.

Pattern 1 — EOA delegates to a backend service

The user calls the ACL contract directly to delegate their own rights:

import { IACL } from "@fhevm/solidity/lib/Impl.sol";

IACL(aclAddress).delegateForUserDecryption(relayer, vault, expirationDate);

After this, the relayer can user-decrypt any handle that has the (EOA, vault) ACL pair.

Pattern 2 — Contract delegates its own rights

A contract delegates user-decryption rights it has been granted. contractAddress must be a different contract whose handles this contract has been allowed to access.

import { FHE } from "@fhevm/solidity/lib/FHE.sol";
import { ZamaEthereumConfig } from "@fhevm/solidity/config/ZamaConfig.sol";

contract Aggregator is ZamaEthereumConfig {
    address public immutable vault;

    constructor(address vault_) { vault = vault_; }

    function authorizeRelayer(address relayer, uint64 expirationDate) external {
        FHE.delegateUserDecryption(relayer, vault, expirationDate);
    }

    function revokeRelayer(address relayer) external {
        FHE.revokeUserDecryptionDelegation(relayer, vault);
    }
}

Common mistake: calling FHE.delegateUserDecryption(relayer, address(this), expiration) from inside a contract, hoping to delegate the caller user's rights. This always reverts because msg.sender == contractAddress violates one of the constraints listed above. Use Pattern 1 instead — the user must call the ACL directly.

API summary

// Granting (caller-contract side)
FHE.delegateUserDecryption(delegate, contractAddress, expirationDate);
FHE.delegateUserDecryptionWithoutExpiration(delegate, contractAddress);
FHE.delegateUserDecryptions(delegate, contractAddresses, expirationDate);            // batch
FHE.delegateUserDecryptionsWithoutExpiration(delegate, contractAddresses);           // batch

// Revoking
FHE.revokeUserDecryptionDelegation(delegate, contractAddress);
FHE.revokeUserDecryptionDelegations(delegate, contractAddresses);                    // batch

// Querying
FHE.isDelegatedForUserDecryption(delegator, delegate, contractAddress, handle);      // active for handle?
FHE.getDelegatedUserDecryptionExpirationDate(delegator, delegate, contractAddress);  // 0 = none, max = permanent
FHE.isUserDecryptable(handle, user, contractAddress);                                // raw ACL check, ignores delegation