`LightClientUpdate` structures currently use different merkle proof root
depending on the presence of `finalized_header`. By always rooting it in
the same state (the `attested_header.state_root`), logic gets simpler.
Caveats:
- In periods of extended non-finality, `update.finalized_header` may now
be outdated by several sync committee periods. The old implementation
rejected such updates as the `next_sync_committee` in them was stale,
but the new implementation can properly handle this case.
- The `next_sync_committee` can no longer be considered finalized based
on `is_finality_update`. Instead, waiting until `finalized_header` is
in the `attested_header`'s sync committee period is now necessary.
- Because `update.finalized_header > store.finalized_header` no longer
holds (for updates with finality), an `is_better_update` helper is
added to improve `best_valid_update` tracking (in the past, finalized
updates with supermajority participation would always directly apply)
This PR builds on prior work from:
- @hwwhww at https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2829
The producer of `LightClientUpdate` structures usually does not know how
far the `LightClientStore` on the client side has advanced. Updates are
currently rejected when including a redundant `next_sync_committee` not
advancing the `LightClientStore`. Behaviour is changed to allow this.
When `state.finalized_checkpoint` references the genesis slot, it points
to an empty `root`, instead of the actual genesis block hash. This patch
updates the `LightClientUpdate` logic to allow including finality proofs
for genesis `finalized_checkpoint.root`, better supporting non-mainnet.
When including such a finality proof, the proof is for the empty `root`,
but `finalized_header` is kept zeroed out to signify this edge case.
The `fork_version` field in `LightClientUpdate` can be derived from the
`update.signature_slot` value by consulting the locally configured fork
schedule. The light client already needs access to the fork schedule to
determine the `GeneralizedIndex` values used for merkle proofs, and the
memory layouts of the structures (including `LightClientUpdate`). The
`fork_version` itself is network dependent and doesn't reveal that info.
As the sync committee signs the previous block, the situation arises at
every sync committee period boundary, that the new sync committee signs
a block in the previous sync committee period. The light client cannot
reliably detect this condition (e.g., assume that this is the case when
it is currently on the last slot of a sync committee period), because
the last couple slots of a sync committee period may not have a block.
For example, when receiving a `LightClientUpdate` that is constructed
as in the following illustration, it is unknown whether `sync_aggregate`
was signed by the current or next sync committee at `attested_header`.
```
slot N N + 1 | N + 2 (slot not sent!)
|
+-----------------+ \ / | +----------------+
| attested_header | <--- X ----|---- | sync_aggregate |
+-----------------+ / \ | +----------------+
missed |
|
sync committee
period boundary
```
This patch addresses this edge case by including the slot at which the
`sync_aggregate` was created into the `LightClientUpdate` object.
Note that the `signature_slot` cannot be trusted beyond the purpose of
signature verification, as it could be manipulated to any other slot
within the same sync committee period and fork version, without making
the `sync_aggregate` invalid.
When a light client updates its `finalized_header` using a forced update
because of the timeout, and the new header was not signed by enough sync
committee participants to pass `get_safety_threshold(store)`, it may
occur that `store.finalized_header.slot > store.optimistic_header.slot`.
This patch ensures that the `optimistic_header` is updated to the latest
`finalized_header` if that happens, so that it always indicates the
latest known and accepted head.
There were a couple instances where a division was used on an epoch
to derive the corresponding sync committee period instead of calling the
`compute_sync_committee_period` function.
These instances were changed to also use the function.
In the light client docs a mentioning of a function trigger is lacking
the `genesis_validators_root` argument. This patch adds that argument
to the documentation to match the real function signature. It also
slightly improves the grammar.
This renames the `sync_committee_aggregate` field of `LightClientUpdate`
to `sync_aggregate` for consistency with the terminology in the rest of
the spec.
1. Replace `header` and `finality_header` with `attested_header` (always the header signed by the committee) and `finailzed_header` (always the header verified by the Merkle branch)
2. Remove `LightClientSnapshot`, fold its fields into `LightClientStore` for simplicity
1. Simplify `valid_updates` to `best_valid_update` so the `LightClientStore` only needs to store O(1) data
2. Track an optimistic head, by looking for the highest-slot header which passes a safety threshold
this avoids the type overhead of having to define a max size for
the object's data and skips the overhead of serialization/consensus
for a type that does not need it
