`SyncCommitteeMsgPool` grouped messages by their `beacon_block_root`.
This is problematic around sync committee period boundaries and forks.
Around sync committee period boundaries, members from both the current
and next sync committee may sign the same `beacon_block_root`; mixing
the signatures from both committees together is a mistake. Likewise,
around fork transitions, the `signing_root` changes, so those messages
also need to be segregated.
When an uncached `ShufflingRef` is requested, we currently replay state
which can take several seconds. Acceleration is possible by:
1. Start from any state with locked-in `get_active_validator_indices`.
Any blocks / slots applied to such a state can only affect that
result for future epochs, so are viable for querying target epoch.
`compute_activation_exit_epoch(state.slot.epoch) > target.epoch`
2. Determine highest common ancestor among `state` and `target.blck`.
At the ancestor slot, same rules re `get_active_validator_indices`.
`compute_activation_exit_epoch(ancestorSlot.epoch) > target.epoch`
3. We now have a `state` that shares history with `target.blck` up
through a common ancestor slot. Any blocks / slots that the `state`
contains, which are not part of the `target.blck` history, affect
`get_active_validator_indices` at epochs _after_ `target.epoch`.
4. Select `state.randao_mixes[N]` that is closest to common ancestor.
Either direction is fine (above / below ancestor).
5. From that RANDAO mix, mix in / out all RANDAO reveals from blocks
in-between. This is just an XOR operation, so fully reversible.
`mix = mix xor SHA256(blck.message.body.randao_reveal)`
6. Compute the attester dependent slot from `target.epoch`.
`if epoch >= 2: (target.epoch - 1).start_slot - 1 else: GENESIS_SLOT`
7. Trace back from `target.blck` to the attester dependent slot.
We now have the destination for which we want to obtain RANDAO.
8. Mix in all RANDAO reveals from blocks up through the `dependentBlck`.
Same method, no special handling necessary for epoch transitions.
9. Combine `get_active_validator_indices` from `state` at `target.epoch`
with the recovered RANDAO value at `dependentBlck` to obtain the
requested shuffling, and construct the `ShufflingRef` without replay.
* more tests and simplify logic
* test with different number of deposits per branch
* Update beacon_chain/consensus_object_pools/blockchain_dag.nim
Co-authored-by: Jacek Sieka <jacek@status.im>
* `commonAncestor` tests
* lint
---------
Co-authored-by: Jacek Sieka <jacek@status.im>
The consensus-spec-tests already cover the scenarios of our custom test
runner, so the custom tests can be removed. Also cleans up unused config
flags and related unreachable logic.
* Refactor nimbus_signing_node to support Unix signals.
* Fix SN unable to close REST server properly.
* Fix `keys`, `deposit` and `validator_registration` endpoints issues.
Add getValidatorExitSignature() and getDepositMessageSignature() to validator_pool.
* Add /reload endpoint and implementation.
Fix signData to not cancel `timer`.
Fix validator_pool should clear attachedValidators table.
* Diva protocol enhancement implementation.
* Update sync to use post-decoupling RPCs
blob_sidecars_by_range returns a flat list of sidecars, which must
then be grouped per-slot.
* Add test for groupBlobs
* createBlobs: convert proc to func
* restore doppelganger check on connectivity loss
https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4398 introduced a
regression in functionality where doppelganger detection would not be
rerun during connectivity loss. This PR reintroduces this check and
makes some adjustments to the implementation to simplify the code flow
for both BN and VC.
* track when check was last performed for each validator (to deal with
late-added validators)
* track when we performed a doppel-detectable activity (attesting) so as
to avoid false positives
* remove nodeStart special case (this should be treated the same as
adding a validator dynamically just after startup)
* allow sync committee duties in doppelganger period
* don't trigger doppelganger when registering duties
* fix crash when expected index response is missing
* fix missing slashingSafe propagation
* exit/validatorchange pool includes BLS to execution messages; REST
support for new pool
* catch failed individual futures
* increase BLS changes bound and keep BLS seen consistent with subpool
* deque capacities should be powers of 2
When running `nimbus_light_client`, we persist the latest header from
`LightClientStore.finalized_header` in a database across restarts.
Because the data format is derived from the latest `LightClientStore`,
this could lead to data being persisted in pre-release formats.
To enable us to test later `LightClientStore` versions on devnets,
transition to a `ForkedLightClientStore` internally that is only
migrated to newer forks on-demand (instead of starting at latest).
Distinguish between those code locations that need to be updated on each
light client data format change, and those others that should generally
be fine, as long as a valid light client object is processed.
The former are tagged with static assert for `LightClientDataFork.high`.
The latter are changed to `lcDataFork > LightClientDataFork.None` to
indicate that they depend only on presence of any valid object.
Also bundled a few minor cleanups and fixes.
Also add `Forky` type for `LightClientStore` and minor fixes / cleanups.
Introduce (optional) pruning of historical data - a pruned node will
continue to answer queries for historical data up to
`MIN_EPOCHS_FOR_BLOCK_REQUESTS` epochs, or roughly 5 months, capping
typical database usage at around 60-70gb.
To enable pruning, add `--history=prune` to the command line - on the
first start, old data will be cleared (which may take a while) - after
that, data is pruned continuously.
When pruning an existing database, the database will not shrink -
instead, the freed space is recycled as the node continues to run - to
free up space, perform a trusted node sync with a fresh database.
When switching on archive mode in a pruned node, history is retained
from that point onwards.
History pruning is scheduled to be enabled by default in a future
release.
In this PR, `minimal` mode from #4419 is not implemented meaning
retention periods for states and blocks are always the same - depending
on user demand, a future PR may implement `minimal` as well.
* fix REST liveness endpoint responding even when gossip is not enabled
* fix VC exit code on doppelganger hit
* fix activation epoch not being updated correctly on long deposit
queues
* fix activation epoch being set incorrectly when updating validator
* move most implementation logic to `validator_pool`, add tests
* ensure consistent logging between VC and BN
* add docs
Other changes:
* More optimal search for TTD block.
* Add timeouts to all REST requests during trusted node sync.
Fixes#4037
* Removed support for storing a deposit snapshot in the network
metadata.
This PR removes a bunch of code to make TNS aware of era files, avoiding
a duplicated backfill when era files are available.
* reuse chaindag for loading backfill state, replacing the TNS homebrew
* fix era block iteration to skip empty slots
* add tests for `can_advance_slots`
When the EL/Builder fails to produce an execution payload, we fall back
to an empty `ExecutionPayload`. Even though it contains no transactions
it should refer to the configured fee recipient. This is useful for
privacy reasons (do not reveal the reason for the empty payload) and for
compliance with additional fee recipient rules by staking pools.
Currently, we require genesis and a checkpoint block and state to start
from an arbitrary slot - this PR relaxes this requirement so that we can
start with a state alone.
The current trusted-node-sync algorithm works by first downloading
blocks until we find an epoch aligned non-empty slot, then downloads the
state via slot.
However, current
[proposals](https://github.com/ethereum/beacon-APIs/pull/226) for
checkpointing prefer finalized state as
the main reference - this allows more simple access control and caching
on the server side - in particular, this should help checkpoint-syncing
from sources that have a fast `finalized` state download (like infura
and teku) but are slow when accessing state via slot.
Earlier versions of Nimbus will not be able to read databases created
without a checkpoint block and genesis. In most cases, backfilling makes
the database compatible except where genesis is also missing (custom
networks).
* backfill checkpoint block from libp2p instead of checkpoint source,
when doing trusted node sync
* allow starting the client without genesis / checkpoint block
* perform epoch start slot lookahead when loading tail state, so as to
deal with the case where the epoch start slot does not have a block
* replace `--blockId` with `--state-id` in TNS command line
* when replaying, also look at the parent of the last-known-block (even
if we don't have the parent block data, we can still replay from a
"parent" state) - in particular, this clears the way for implementing
state pruning
* deprecate `--finalized-checkpoint-block` option (no longer needed)
* Allow chain dag without genesis / block
This PR enables the initialization of the dag without access to blocks
or genesis state - it is a prerequisite for implementing a number of
interesting features:
* checkpoint sync without any block download
* pruning of blocks and states
* backfill checkpoint block
The optimistic sync spec was updated since the LC based optsync module
was introduced. It is no longer necessary to wait for the justified
checkpoint to have execution enabled; instead, any block is okay to be
optimistically imported to the EL client, as long as its parent block
has execution enabled. Complex syncing logic has been removed, and the
LC optsync module will now follow gossip directly, reducing the latency
when using this module. Note that because this is now based on gossip
instead of using sync manager / request manager, that individual blocks
may be missed. However, EL clients should recover from this by fetching
missing blocks themselves.
* Harden block proposal against expired slashings/exits
When a message is signed in a phase0 domain, it can no longer be
validated under bellatrix due to the correct fork no longer being
available in the `BeaconState`.
To ensure that all slashing/exits are still valid, in this PR we re-run
the checks in the state that we're proposing for, thus hardening against
both signatures and other changes in the state that might have
invalidated the message.
* fix same message added multiple times
in case of attestation slashing of multiple validators in one go
* support connecting to peers without bellatrix
Make discovery fork ID aware of scheduled Bellatrix fork to enable
connections to peers that don't have Bellatrix scheduled yet.
Without this, has peering issues with peers on older SW version.
* expand tests with compatibility checks
* more exhaustive compatibility checks
* Keymanager API for the validator client
* Properly treat the 'description' field as optional when loading Keystores
* Spec-compliant serialization of the slashing data in Keymanager's DeleteKeys response ()
Fixes#3940Fixes#3964Closes#3884 by adding test
When fetching eth1 data and deposits for a new block proposal, the list
of deposits from previous eth1 data to the next one is fully loaded into
a `seq`. This can potentially be a very long list in active periods.
Changing this to an `iterator` saves memory by ensuring that the entire
list is no longer materialized; only the `DepositData` roots are needed.
The light client sync protocol employs heuristics to ensure it does not
become stuck during non-finality or low sync committee participation.
These can enable use cases that prefer availability of recent data
over security. For our syncing use case, though, security is preferred.
An option is added to light client processor to configure this tradeoff.
Other changes:
* The Keymanager error responses differ from the Beacon API responses.
'keymanagerApiError' replaces the former usages of 'jsonError'.
* Return status code 401 and 403 for authorization errors in accordance
to the spec.
* Eliminate inconsistencies in the REST JSON parsing. Some of the code
paths allowed missing fields.
* Added logging of serialization failure details at DEBUG level.
This updates `nim-ssz-serialization` to
`3db6cc0f282708aca6c290914488edd832971d61`.
Notable changes:
- Use `uint64` for `GeneralizedIndex`
- Add support for building merkle multiproofs
When launched with `--light-client-enable` the latest blocks are fetched
and optimistic candidate blocks are passed to a callback (log for now).
This helps accelerate syncing in the future (optimistic sync).
Incorporates the latest changes to the light client sync protocol based
on Devconnect AMS feedback. Note that this breaks compatibility with the
previous prototype, due to changes to data structures and endpoints.
See https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2802
Other fixes:
* Fix bit rot in the `make prater-dev-deposit` target.
* Correct content-type in the responses of the Nimbus signing node
* Invalid JSON payload was being sent in the web3signer requests
When doing checkpoint sync, collecting light client data of known blocks
and states incorrectly assumes that `finalized_checkpoint` information
is also known. Hardens collection to only collect finalized checkpoint
data after `dag.computeEarliestLightClientSlot`.
Adds `LightClientProcessor` as the pendant to `BlockProcessor` while
operating in light client mode. Note that a similar mechanism based on
async futures is used for interoperability with existing infrastructure,
despite light client object validation being done synchronously.
Up til now, the block dag has been using `BlockRef`, a structure adapted
for a full DAG, to represent all of chain history. This is a correct and
simple design, but does not exploit the linearity of the chain once
parts of it finalize.
By pruning the in-memory `BlockRef` structure at finalization, we save,
at the time of writing, a cool ~250mb (or 25%:ish) chunk of memory
landing us at a steady state of ~750mb normal memory usage for a
validating node.
Above all though, we prevent memory usage from growing proportionally
with the length of the chain, something that would not be sustainable
over time - instead, the steady state memory usage is roughly
determined by the validator set size which grows much more slowly. With
these changes, the core should remain sustainable memory-wise post-merge
all the way to withdrawals (when the validator set is expected to grow).
In-memory indices are still used for the "hot" unfinalized portion of
the chain - this ensure that consensus performance remains unchanged.
What changes is that for historical access, we use a db-based linear
slot index which is cache-and-disk-friendly, keeping the cost for
accessing historical data at a similar level as before, achieving the
savings at no percievable cost to functionality or performance.
A nice collateral benefit is the almost-instant startup since we no
longer load any large indicies at dag init.
The cost of this functionality instead can be found in the complexity of
having to deal with two ways of traversing the chain - by `BlockRef` and
by slot.
* use `BlockId` instead of `BlockRef` where finalized / historical data
may be required
* simplify clearance pre-advancement
* remove dag.finalizedBlocks (~50:ish mb)
* remove `getBlockAtSlot` - use `getBlockIdAtSlot` instead
* `parent` and `atSlot` for `BlockId` now require a `ChainDAGRef`
instance, unlike `BlockRef` traversal
* prune `BlockRef` parents on finality (~200:ish mb)
* speed up ChainDAG init by not loading finalized history index
* mess up light client server error handling - this need revisiting :)
One more step on the journey to reduce `BlockRef` usage across the
codebase - this one gets rid of `StateData` whose job was to keep track
of which block was last assigned to a state - these duties have now been
taken over by `latest_block_root`, a fairly recent addition that
computes this block root from state data (at a small cost that should be
insignificant)
99% mechanical change.
When a `beaconBlocksByRange` response advances the `safeSlot`, but later
has errors, the sync queue keeps repeating that same request until it is
fulfilled without errors. Data up through `safeSlot` is considered to be
immutable, i.e., finalized, so re-requesting that data is not useful.
By advancing the sync progress in that scenario, those redundant query
portions can be avoided. Note, the finalized block _itself_ is always
requested, even in the initial request. This behaviour is kept same.
* fewer deps on `BlockRef` traversal in anticipation of pruning
* allows identifying EpochRef:s by their shuffling as a first step of
* tighten error handling around missing blocks
using the zero hash for signalling "missing block" is fragile and easy
to miss - with checkpoint sync now, and pruning in the future, missing
blocks become "normal".
Light clients require full nodes to serve additional data so that they
can stay in sync with the network. This patch adds a new launch option
`--import-light-client-data` to configure what data to make available.
For now, data is only kept in memory; it is not persisted at this time.
Note that data is only locally collected, a separate patch is needed to
actually make it availble over the network. `--serve-light-client-data`
will be used for serving data, but is not functional yet outside tests.
* Store finalized block roots in database (3s startup)
When the chain has finalized a checkpoint, the history from that point
onwards becomes linear - this is exploited in `.era` files to allow
constant-time by-slot lookups.
In the database, we can do the same by storing finalized block roots in
a simple sparse table indexed by slot, bringing the two representations
closer to each other in terms of conceptual layout and performance.
Doing so has a number of interesting effects:
* mainnet startup time is improved 3-5x (3s on my laptop)
* the _first_ startup might take slightly longer as the new index is
being built - ~10s on the same laptop
* we no longer rely on the beacon block summaries to load the full dag -
this is a lot faster because we no longer have to look up each block by
parent root
* a collateral benefit is that we no longer need to load the full
summaries table into memory - we get the RSS benefits of #3164 without
the CPU hit.
Other random stuff:
* simplify forky block generics
* fix withManyWrites multiple evaluation
* fix validator key cache not being updated properly in chaindag
read-only mode
* drop pre-altair summaries from `kvstore`
* recreate missing summaries from altair+ blocks as well (in case
database has lost some to an involuntary restart)
* print database startup timings in chaindag load log
* avoid allocating superfluos state at startup
* use a recursive sql query to load the summaries of the unfinalized
blocks
* Harden handling of unviable forks
In our current handling of unviable forks, we allow peers to send us
blocks that come from a different fork - this is not necessarily an
error as it can happen naturally, but it does open up the client to a
case where the same unviable fork keeps getting requested - rather than
allowing this to happen, we'll now give these peers a small negative
score - if it keeps happening, we'll disconnect them.
* keep track of unviable forks in quarantine, to avoid filling it with
known junk
* collect peer scores in single module
* descore peers when they send unviable blocks during sync
* don't give score for duplicate blocks
* increase quarantine size to a level that allows finality to happen
under optimal conditions - this helps avoid downloading the same blocks
over and over in case of an unviable fork
* increase initial score for new peers to make room for one more failure
before disconnection
* log and score invalid/unviable blocks in requestmanager too
* avoid ChainDAG dependency in quarantine
* reject gossip blocks with unviable parent
* continue processing unviable sync blocks in order to build unviable
dag
* docs
* Update beacon_chain/consensus_object_pools/block_pools_types.nim
* add unviable queue test
* limit by-root requests to non-finalized blocks
Presently, we keep a mapping from block root to `BlockRef` in memory -
this has simplified reasoning about the dag, but is not sustainable with
the chain growing.
We can distinguish between two cases where by-root access is useful:
* unfinalized blocks - this is where the beacon chain is operating
generally, by validating incoming data as interesting for future fork
choice decisions - bounded by the length of the unfinalized period
* finalized blocks - historical access in the REST API etc - no bounds,
really
In this PR, we limit the by-root block index to the first use case:
finalized chain data can more efficiently be addressed by slot number.
Future work includes:
* limiting the `BlockRef` horizon in general - each instance is 40
bytes+overhead which adds up - this needs further refactoring to deal
with the tail vs state problem
* persisting the finalized slot-to-hash index - this one also keeps
growing unbounded (albeit slowly)
Anyway, this PR easily shaves ~128mb of memory usage at the time of
writing.
* No longer honor `BeaconBlocksByRoot` requests outside of the
non-finalized period - previously, Nimbus would generously return any
block through this libp2p request - per the spec, finalized blocks
should be fetched via `BeaconBlocksByRange` instead.
* return `Opt[BlockRef]` instead of `nil` when blocks can't be found -
this becomes a lot more common now and thus deserves more attention
* `dag.blocks` -> `dag.forkBlocks` - this index only carries unfinalized
blocks from now - `finalizedBlocks` covers the other `BlockRef`
instances
* in backfill, verify that the last backfilled block leads back to
genesis, or panic
* add backfill timings to log
* fix missing check that `BlockRef` block can be fetched with
`getForkedBlock` reliably
* shortcut doppelganger check when feature is not enabled
* in REST/JSON-RPC, fetch blocks without involving `BlockRef`
* fix dag.blocks ref
The new format is based on compressed CSV files in two channels:
* Detailed per-epoch data
* Aggregated "daily" summaries
The use of append-only CSV file speeds up significantly the epoch
processing speed during data generation. The use of compression
results in smaller storage requirements overall. The use of the
aggregated files has a very minor cost in both CPU and storage,
but leads to near interactive speed for report generation.
Other changes:
- Implemented support for graceful shut downs to avoid corrupting
the saved files.
- Fixed a memory leak caused by lacking `StateCache` clean up on each
iteration.
- Addressed review comments
- Moved the rewards and penalties calculation code in a separate module
Required invasive changes to existing modules:
- The `data` field of the `KeyedBlockRef` type is made public to be used
by the validator rewards monitor's Chain DAG update procedure.
- The `getForkedBlock` procedure from the `blockchain_dag.nim` module
is made public to be used by the validator rewards monitor's Chain DAG
update procedure.
Time in the beacon chain is expressed relative to the genesis time -
this PR creates a `beacon_time` module that collects helpers and
utilities for dealing the time units - the new module does not deal with
actual wall time (that's remains in `beacon_clock`).
Collecting the time related stuff in one place makes it easier to find,
avoids some circular imports and allows more easily identifying the code
actually needs wall time to operate.
* move genesis-time-related functionality into `spec/beacon_time`
* avoid using `chronos.Duration` for time differences - it does not
support negative values (such as when something happens earlier than it
should)
* saturate conversions between `FAR_FUTURE_XXX`, so as to avoid
overflows
* fix delay reporting in validator client so it uses the expected
deadline of the slot, not "closest wall slot"
* simplify looping over the slots of an epoch
* `compute_start_slot_at_epoch` -> `start_slot`
* `compute_epoch_at_slot` -> `epoch`
A follow-up PR will (likely) introduce saturating arithmetic for the
time units - this is merely code moves, renames and fixing of small
bugs.
* Harden CommitteeIndex, SubnetId, SyncSubcommitteeIndex
Harden the use of `CommitteeIndex` et al to prevent future issues by
using a distinct type, then validating before use in several cases -
datatypes in spec are kept simple though so that invalid data still can
be read.
* fix invalid epoch used in REST
`/eth/v1/beacon/states/{state_id}/committees` committee length (could
return invalid data)
* normalize some variable names
* normalize committee index loops
* fix `RestAttesterDuty` to use `uint64` for `validator_committee_index`
* validate `CommitteeIndex` on ingress in REST API
* update rest rules with stricter parsing
* better REST serializers
* save lots of memory by not using `zip` ...at least a few bytes!
* use v1.1.6 test vectors; use BeaconTime instead of Slot in fork choice
* tick through every slot at least once
* use div INTERVALS_PER_SLOT and use precomputed constants of them
* use correct (even if numerically equal) constant
Validator monitoring based on and mostly compatible with the
implementation in Lighthouse - tracks additional logs and metrics for
specified validators so as to stay on top on performance.
The implementation works more or less the following way:
* Validator pubkeys are singled out for monitoring - these can be
running on the node or not
* For every action that the validator takes, we record steps in the
process such as messages being seen on the network or published in the
API
* When the dust settles at the end of an epoch, we report the
information from one epoch before that, which coincides with the
balances being updated - this is a tradeoff between being correct
(waiting for finalization) and providing relevant information in a
timely manner)
In the ChainDAG, 3 block pointers are kept: genesis, tail and head. This
PR adds one more block pointer: the backfill block which represents the
block that has been backfilled so far.
When doing a checkpoint sync, a random block is given as starting point
- this is the tail block, and we require that the tail block has a
corresponding state.
When backfilling, we end up with blocks without corresponding states,
hence we cannot use `tail` as a backfill pointer - there is no state.
Nonetheless, we need to keep track of where we are in the backfill
process between restarts, such that we can answer GetBeaconBlocksByRange
requests.
This PR adds the basic support for backfill handling - it needs to be
integrated with backfill sync, and the REST API needs to be adjusted to
take advantage of the new backfilled blocks when responding to certain
requests.
Future work will also enable moving the tail in either direction:
* pruning means moving the tail forward in time and removing states
* backwards means recreating past states from genesis, such that
intermediate states are recreated step by step all the way to the tail -
at that point, tail, genesis and backfill will match up.
* backfilling is done when backfill != genesis - later, this will be the
WSS checkpoint instead
As of https://github.com/status-im/nim-eth/pull/379 `nim-eth` defines a
couple static test cases for merkle proof verification.
Since the EF has defined a `is_valid_merkle_branch` function in the spec
we are no longer using the custom implementation from `nim-eth`, but the
tests were never ported to target the new implementation. This patch now
follows up on that and integrates those tests from `nim-eth`.
* BlockId reform
Introduce `BlockId` that helps track a root/slot pair - this prepares
the codebase for backfilling and handling out-of-dag blocks
* move block dag code to separate module
* fix finalised state root in REST event stream
* fix finalised head computation on head update, when starting from
checkpoint
* clean up chaindag init
* revert `epochAncestor` change in introduced in #3144 that would return
an epoch ancestor from the canoncial history instead of the given
history, causing `EpochRef` keys to point to the wrong block
* Introduce slot->BlockRef mapping for finalized chain
The finalized chain is linear, thus we can use a seq to lookup blocks by
slot number.
Here, we introduce such a seq, even though in the future, it should
likely be backed by a database structure instead, or, more likely, a
flat era file with a flat lookup index.
This dramatically speeds up requests by slot, such as those coming from
the REST interface or GetBlocksByRange, as these are currently served by
a linear iteration from head.
* fix REST block requests to not return blocks from an earlier slot when
the given slot is empty
* fix StateId interpretation such that it doesn't treat state roots as
block roots
* don't load full block from database just to return its root
* move quarantine outside of chaindag
The quarantine has been part of the ChainDAG for the longest time, but
this design has a few issues:
* the function in which blocks are verified and added to the dag becomes
reentrant and therefore difficult to reason about - we're currently
using a stateful flag to work around it
* quarantined blocks bypass the processing queue leading to a processing
stampede
* the quarantine flow is unsuitable for orphaned attestations - these
should also should be quarantined eventually
Instead of processing the quarantine inside ChainDAG, this PR moves
re-queueing to `block_processor` which already is responsible for
dealing with follow-up work when a block is added to the dag
This sets the stage for keeping attestations in the quarantine as well.
Also:
* make `BlockError` `{.pure.}`
* avoid use of `ValidationResult` in block clearance (that's for gossip)