EIPs/EIPS/eip-1985.md

eip	title	author	discussions-to	status	type	category	created
1985	Sane limits for certain EVM parameters	Alex Beregszaszi (@axic), Paweł Bylica (@chfast)	https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-1985-sane-limits-for-certain-evm-parameters/3224	Draft	Standards Track	Core	2018-08-01

Abstract

Introduce an explicit value range for certain EVM parameters (such as gas limit, block number, block timestamp, size field when returning/copying data within EVM). Some of these already have an implicit value range due to various (practical) reasons.

Motivation

Having such an explicit value range can help in creating compatible client implementations, in certain cases it can also offer minor speed improvements, and can reduce the effort needed to create consensus critical test cases by eliminating unrealistic edge cases.

Specification

If block.number >= {FORK_BLOCK}, the following value ranges are introduced. They restrict the results (i.e. values pushed to the stack) of the opcodes listed below.

1. gas, gas limit, block gas limit is a range between 0 and 9223372036854775807 (2**63 - 1). It affects following the opcodes:

   • GASLIMIT (0x45),
   • GAS (0x5a).

2. block number, timestamp is a range between 0 and 9223372036854775807 (2**63 - 1). It affects the following opcodes:

   • TIMESTAMP (0x42),
   • NUMBER (0x43).

3. account address is a range between 0 and 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542975 (2**160 - 1). It affects the following opcodes:

   • ADDRESS (0x30),
   • ORIGIN (0x32),
   • CALLER (0x33),
   • COINBASE (0x41),
   • CREATE (0xf0),
   • CREATE2 (0xf5).

4. buffer size is a range between 0 and 4294967295 (2**32 - 1). It affects the following opcodes:

   • CALLDATASIZE (0x36),
   • CODESIZE (0x38),
   • EXTCODESIZE (0x3b),
   • RETURNDATASIZE (0x3d),
   • MSIZE (0x59).

Rationale

These limits have been:

• proposed by EVMC
• implemented partially by certain clients, such as Aleth, geth, Parity and ethereumjs
• allowed by certain test cases in the Ethereum testing suite
• and implicitly also allowed by certain assumptions, such as due to gas limits some of these values cannot grow past a certain limit

Most of the limits proposed in this document have been previously explored and tested in EVMC.

Using the 2**63 - 1 constant to limit some of the ranges:

• allows using signed 64-bit integer type to represent it, what helps programming languages not having unsigned types,
• makes arithmetic simpler (e.g. checking out-of-gas conditions is simple as gas_counter < 0).

Timestamp

The Yellow Paper defines the timestamp in block as "A scalar value equal to the reasonable output of Unix’s time() at this block’s inception". IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (POSIX.1) leaves that definition implementation defined.

Addresses

The size of addresses is specified in the Yellow Paper as 20 bytes. E.g. the COINBASE instruction is specified to return H_c ∈ 𝔹₂₀ which has 20 bytes.

Comparing current implementations

• Timestamp is implemented as a 64-bit value in Aleth, geth and Parity
• Block gas limit is implemented as a 64-bit in Aleth and geth

Backwards Compatibility

All of these limits are already enforced mostly through the block gas limit. Since the out of range case results in a transaction failure, there should not be a change in behaviour.

Test Cases

TBA

Implementation

TBA

References

EIP-106 proposed the block gas limit to be limited at 2**63 - 1.

TODO

1. Does the gas limit apply to the gas argument for call instructions?

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.