result.gasPrice = baseFee + min(result.maxPriorityFee, result.maxFee - baseFee)
cannot be simplified into
result.gasPrice = min(result.maxPriorityFee + baseFee, result.maxFee)
the expression is not commutative
details:
For documentation, see comments in the file tx_pool.nim.
For prettified manual pages run 'make docs' in the nimbus directory and
point your web browser to the newly created 'docs' directory.
why:
Previous version was based on lru_cache which is ugly. This module is
based on the stew/keyed_queue library module.
other:
There are still some other modules rely on lru_cache which should be
removed.
* Redesign of BaseVMState descriptor
why:
BaseVMState provides an environment for executing transactions. The
current descriptor also provides data that cannot generally be known
within the execution environment, e.g. the total gasUsed which is
available not before after all transactions have finished.
Also, the BaseVMState constructor has been replaced by a constructor
that does not need pre-initialised input of the account database.
also:
Previous constructor and some fields are provided with a deprecated
annotation (producing a lot of noise.)
* Replace legacy directives in production sources
* Replace legacy directives in unit test sources
* fix CI (missing premix update)
* Remove legacy directives
* chase CI problem
* rebased
* Re-introduce 'AccountsCache' constructor optimisation for 'BaseVmState' re-initialisation
why:
Constructing a new 'AccountsCache' descriptor can be avoided sometimes
when the current state root is properly positioned already. Such a
feature existed already as the update function 'initStateDB()' for the
'BaseChanDB' where the accounts cache was linked into this desctiptor.
The function 'initStateDB()' was removed and re-implemented into the
'BaseVmState' constructor without optimisation. The old version was of
restricted use as a wrong accounts cache state would unconditionally
throw an exception rather than conceptually ask for a remedy.
The optimised 'BaseVmState' re-initialisation has been implemented for
the 'persistBlocks()' function.
also:
moved some test helpers to 'test/replay' folder
* Remove unused & undocumented fields from Chain descriptor
why:
Reduces attack surface in general & improves reading the code.
details:
1. The check for cumulativeGasUsed + tx.gasLimit <= header.gasLimit
makes neither sense nor is it part of the Eip1559 specs. Nevertheless
a check tx.gasLimit <= header.gasLimit is added to satisfy some
unit test (see comments in validateTransaction() body.)
2. As a replacement check for the one removed in 1, a check for
cumulativeGasUsed + gasBurned <= header.gasLimit has been added
(see comments in processTransactionImpl() body.)
3. Prototypes for processTransaction() variants have been cleaned up and
commented.
why:
Detail 1. in particular produces an error for tightly packed blocks when
the last tx in the list has a generous gasLimit.
previously, every time the VMState was created, it will also create
new stateDB, and this action will nullify the advantages of cached accounts.
the new changes will conserve the accounts cache if the executed blocks
are contiguous. if not the stateDB need to be reinited.
this changes also allow rpcCallEvm and rpcEstimateGas executed properly
using current stateDB instead of creating new one each time they are called.
* Provide API
details:
API is bundled via clique.nim.
* Set extraValidation as default for PoA chains
why:
This triggers consensus verification and an update of the list
of authorised signers. These signers are integral part of the
PoA block chain.
todo:
Option argument to control validation for the nimbus binary.
* Fix snapshot state block number
why:
Using sub-sequence here, so the len() function was wrong.
* Optional start where block verification begins
why:
Can speed up time building loading initial parts of block chain. For
PoA, this allows to prove & test that authorised signers can be
(correctly) calculated starting at any point on the block chain.
todo:
On Goerli around blocks #193537..#197568, processing time increases
disproportionally -- needs to be understand
* For Clique test, get old grouping back (7 transactions per log entry)
why:
Forgot to change back after troubleshooting
* Fix field/function/module-name misunderstanding
why:
Make compilation work
* Use eth_types.blockHash() rather than utils.hash() in Clique modules
why:
Prefer lib module
* Dissolve snapshot_misc.nim
details:
.. into clique_verify.nim (the other source file clique_unused.nim
is inactive)
* Hide unused AsyncLock in Clique descriptor
details:
Unused here but was part of the Go reference implementation
* Remove fakeDiff flag from Clique descriptor
details:
This flag was a kludge in the Go reference implementation used for the
canonical tests. The tests have been adapted so there is no need for
the fakeDiff flag and its implementation.
* Not observing minimum distance from epoch sync point
why:
For compiling PoA state, the go implementation will walk back to the
epoch header with at least 90000 blocks apart from the current header
in the absence of other synchronisation points.
Here just the nearest epoch header is used. The assumption is that all
the checkpoints before have been vetted already regardless of the
current branch.
details:
The behaviour of using the nearest vs the minimum distance epoch is
controlled by a flag and can be changed at run time.
* Analysing processing time (patch adds some debugging/visualisation support)
why:
At the first half million blocks of the Goerli replay, blocks on the
interval #194854..#196224 take exceptionally long to process, but not
due to PoA processing.
details:
It turns out that much time is spent in p2p/excecutor.processBlock()
where the elapsed transaction execution time is significantly greater
for many of these blocks.
Between the 1371 blocks #194854..#196224 there are 223 blocks with more
than 1/2 seconds execution time whereas there are only 4 such blocks
before and 13 such after this range up to #504192.
* fix debugging symbol in clique_desc (causes CI failing)
* Fixing canonical reference tests
why:
Two errors were introduced earlier but ovelooked:
1. "Remove fakeDiff flag .." patch was incomplete
2. "Not observing minimum distance .." introduced problem w/tests 23/24
details:
Fixing 2. needed to revert the behaviour by setting the
applySnapsMinBacklog flag for the Clique descriptor. Also a new
test was added to lock the new behaviour.
* Remove cruft
why:
Clique/PoA processing was intended to take place somewhere in
executor/process_block.processBlock() but was decided later to run
from chain/persist_block.persistBlock() instead.
* Update API comment
* ditto
Disable some trace messages which appeared a lot in the output and probably
aren't so useful any more, when block processing is functioning well at high
speed.
Turning on the trace level globally is useful to get a feel for what's
happening, but only if each category is kept to a reasonable amount.
As well as overwhelming the output so that it's hard to see general activity,
some of these messages happen so much they severely slow down processing. Ones
called every time an EVM opcode uses some gas are particularly extreme.
These messages have all been chosen as things which are probably not useful any
more (the relevant functionality has been debugged and is tested plenty).
These have been commented out rather than removed. It may be that turning
trace topics on/off, or other selection, is a better longer term solution, but
that will require better command line options and good defaults for sure.
(I think higher levels `tracev` and `tracevv` levels (extra verbose) would be
more useful for this sort of deep tracing on request.)
For now, enabling `--log-level:TRACE` on the command line is quite useful as
long as we keep each category reasonable, and this patch tries to keep that
balance.
- Don't show "has transactions" on virtually every block imported.
- Don't show "Sender" and "txHash" lines on every transaction processed.
- Don't show "GAS CONSUMPTION" on every opcode executed", this is way too much.
- Don't show "GAS RETURNED" and "GAS REFUND" on each contract call.
- Don't show "op: Stop" on every Stop opcode, which means every transaction.
- Don't show "Insufficient funds" whenever a contract can't call another.
- Don't show "ECRecover", "SHA256 precompile", "RIPEMD160", "Identity"
or even "Call precompile" every time a precompile is called. These are
very well tested now.
- Don't show "executeOpcodes error" whenever a contract returns an error.
(This is changed to `trace` too, it's a normal event that is well tested.)
Signed-off-by: Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>
* re-shuffled Clique functions
why:
Due to the port from the go-sources, the interface logic is not optimal
for nimbus. The main visible function is currently snapshot() and most
of the _procurement_ of this function result has been moved to a
sub-directory.
* run eip-225 Clique test against p2p/chain.persistBlocks()
why:
Previously, loading the test block chains was fugdged with the purpose
only to fill the database. As it is now clear how nimbus works on
Goerli, the same can be achieved with a more realistic scenario.
details:
Eventually these tests will be pre-cursor to the reply tests for the
Goerli chain supporting TDD approach with more simple cases.
* fix exception annotations for executor module
why:
needed for exception tracking
details:
main annoyance are vmState methods (in state.nim) which potentially
throw a base level Exception (a proc would only throws CatchableError)
* split p2p/chain into sub-modules and fix exception annotations
why:
make space for implementing PoA stuff
* provide over-loadable Clique PRNG
why:
There is a PRNG provided for generating reproducible number sequences.
The functions which employ the PRNG to generate time slots were ported
ported from the go-implementation. They are currently unused.
* implement trusted signer assembly in p2p/chain.persistBlocks()
details:
* PoA processing moved there at the end of a transaction. Currently,
there is no action (eg. transaction rollback) if this fails.
* The unit tests with staged blocks work ok. In particular, there should
be tests with to-be-rejected blocks.
* TODO: 1.Optimise throughput/cache handling; 2.Verify headers
* fix statement cast in pool.nim
* added table features to LRU cache
why:
Clique uses the LRU cache using a mixture of volatile online items
from the LRU cache and database checkpoints for hard synchronisation.
For performance, Clique needs more table like features.
details:
First, last, and query key added, as well as efficient random delete
added. Also key-item pair iterator added for debugging.
* re-factored LRU snapshot caching
why:
Caching was sub-optimal (aka. bonkers) in that it skipped over memory
caches in many cases and so mostly rebuild the snapshot from the
last on-disk checkpoint.
details;
The LRU snapshot toValue() handler has been moved into the module
clique_snapshot. This is for the fact that toValue() is not supposed
to see the whole LRU cache database. So there must be a higher layer
working with the the whole LRU cache and the on-disk checkpoint
database.
also:
some clean up
todo:
The code still assumes that the block headers are valid in itself. This
is particular important when an epoch header (aka re-sync header) is
processed as it must contain the PoA result of all previous headers.
So blocks need to be verified when they come in before used for PoA
processing.
* fix some snapshot cache fringe cases
why:
Must not index empty sequences in clique_snapshot module
* extract unused clique/mining support into separate file
why:
mining is currently unsupported by nimbus
* Replay first 51840 transactions from Goerli block chain
why:
Currently Goerli is loaded but the block headers are not verified.
Replaying allows real data PoA development.
details:
Simple stupid gzipped dump/undump layer for debugging based on
the zlib module (no nim-faststream support.)
This is a replay running against p2p/chain.persistBlocks() where
the data were captured from.
* prepare stubs for PoA engine
* split executor source into sup-modules
why:
make room for updates, clique integration should go into
executor/update_poastate.nim
* Simplify p2p/executor.processBlock() function prototype
why:
vmState argument always wraps basicChainDB
* split processBlock() into sub-functions
why:
isolate the part where it will support clique/poa
* provided additional processTransaction() function prototype without _fork_ argument
why:
with the exception of some tests, the _fork_ argument is always derived
from the other prototype argument _vmState_
details:
similar situation with makeReceipt()
* provide new processBlock() version explicitly supporting PoA
details:
The new processBlock() version supporting PoA is the general one also
supporting non-PoA networks, it needs an additional _Clique_ descriptor
function argument for PoA state (if any.)
The old processBlock() function without the _Clique_ descriptor argument
retorns an error on PoA networgs (e.g. Goerli.)
* re-implemented Clique descriptor as _ref object_
why:
gives more flexibility when moving around the descriptor object
details:
also cleaned up a bit the clique sources
* comments for clarifying handling of Clique/PoA state descriptor
jangko
Jordan Hrycaj
Jamie Lokier