Eos: Autonomously executing smart contracts

[Netherdrake]

One of the limitations of Ethereum contracts is that they need to be called (and paid for) manually, each time the user wants to do anything.

This greatly limits dapps in their scope of functionality.

Are there any plans for mechanisms in EOS that would allow for:
a.) smart contracts execution being scheduled programmatically
b.) smart contracts having the ability to perform pre-authorized transactions, based on agreed upon specification

Example 1:
Vests power-down on Steem is illustrating the desired autonomous ability of a decentralized application. The user will get their Steem credited to their account, every week, without a need do anything beyond initiating the hard-coded contract.

Example 2:
Credit Card subscriptions are a popular mean of payments in the legacy world. It would be very burdensome for merchants to try and re-commit their clients to re-purchase. Additional friction is created on the buyer side, as they have to allocate their time and energy to a tedious process of paying their bills.
Perhaps a smart contract mimicking the subscriptions pattern would be an important addition for dapps.

[nmushegian]

Sounds like https://github.com/EOSIO/Documentation/blob/master/TechnicalWhitePaper.md#messages-with-mandatory-delay

[bytemaster]

Yes this is something we are actively thinking about.

[batonio]

@bytemaster, to which phase of the project would you like to include this case?

[gustavomick]

@bytemaster any updates on this one? thanks

[hayekw]

I do hope EOS has these features

[heifner]

These two features are available in eos.io.