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.
Extends fork choice state to also track slot numbers to improve accuracy
of `/eth/v1/debug/fork_choice` endpoint. Autoenable this API on devnet,
and disable some extra checks on devnet to aid focused testing efforts.
Align fork choice pruning logic with API based on checkpoints vs root.
* detect mismatch of config and binary
When loading configuration that sets keys that Nimbus bakes into the
binary at compile-time, raise an error if the config is incompatible
instead of ignoring the conflicting value.
When the BN-embedded LC makes sync progress, pass the corresponding
execution block hash to the EL via `engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1`.
This allows the EL to sync to wall slot while the chain DAG is behind.
Renamed `--light-client` to `--sync-light-client` for clarity, and
`--light-client-trusted-block-root` to `--trusted-block-root` for
consistency with `nimbus_light_client`.
Note that this does not work well in practice at this time:
- Geth sticks to the optimistic sync:
"Ignoring payload while snap syncing" (when passing the LC head)
"Forkchoice requested unknown head" (when updating to LC head)
- Nethermind syncs to LC head but does not report ancestors as VALID,
so the main forward sync is still stuck in optimistic mode:
"Pre-pivot block, ignored and returned Syncing"
To aid EL client teams in fixing those issues, having this available
as a hidden option is still useful.
Removes a few extra-ambitious templates to make `self` updates explicit,
and moves the `FinalityCheckpoints` type from `base` to `helpers` as it
is an additional Nimbus specific type not defined by spec.
The justified and finalized `Checkpoint` are frequently passed around
together. This introduces a new `FinalityCheckpoint` data structure that
combines them into one.
Due to the large usage of this structure in fork choice, also took this
opportunity to update fork choice tests to the latest v1.2.0-rc.1 spec.
Many additional tests enabled, some need more work, e.g. EL mock blocks.
Also implemented `discard_equivocations` which was skipped in #3661,
and improved code reuse across fork choice logic while at it.
Other changes:
* logtrace can now verify sync committee messages and contributions
* Many unnecessary use of pairs() have been removed for consistency
* Map 40x BN response codes to BeaconNodeStatus.Incompatible in the VC
Updated outdated presets / configs / REST config to v1.1.10 specs.
- `TERMINAL_BLOCK_HASH_ACTIVATION_EPOCH` and `PROPOSER_SCORE_BOOST` are
not yet used in `eth2-networks`, added configurability as TODOs.
- `MIN_ANCHOR_POW_BLOCK_DIFFICULTY` is no longer needed, put on ignore
list as some Altair devnets still reference it.
Some upstream repos still need fixes, but this gets us close enough that
style hints can be enabled by default.
In general, "canonical" spellings are preferred even if they violate
nep-1 - this applies in particular to spec-related stuff like
`genesis_validators_root` which appears throughout the codebase.
* era: load blocks and states
Era files contain finalized history and can be thought of as an
alternative source for block and state data that allows clients to avoid
syncing this information from the P2P network - the P2P network is then
used to "top up" the client with the most recent data. They can be
freely shared in the community via whatever means (http, torrent, etc)
and serve as a permanent cold store of consensus data (and, after the
merge, execution data) for history buffs and bean counters alike.
This PR gently introduces support for loading blocks and states in two
cases: block requests from rest/p2p and frontfilling when doing
checkpoint sync.
The era files are used as a secondary source if the information is not
found in the database - compared to the database, there are a few key
differences:
* the database stores the block indexed by block root while the era file
indexes by slot - the former is used only in rest, while the latter is
used both by p2p and rest.
* when loading blocks from era files, the root is no longer trivially
available - if it is needed, it must either be computed (slow) or cached
(messy) - the good news is that for p2p requests, it is not needed
* in era files, "framed" snappy encoding is used while in the database
we store unframed snappy - for p2p2 requests, the latter requires
recompression while the former could avoid it
* front-filling is the process of using era files to replace backfilling
- in theory this front-filling could happen from any block and
front-fills with gaps could also be entertained, but our backfilling
algorithm cannot take advantage of this because there's no (simple) way
to tell it to "skip" a range.
* front-filling, as implemented, is a bit slow (10s to load mainnet): we
load the full BeaconState for every era to grab the roots of the blocks
- it would be better to partially load the state - as such, it would
also be good to be able to partially decompress snappy blobs
* lookups from REST via root are served by first looking up a block
summary in the database, then using the slot to load the block data from
the era file - however, there needs to be an option to create the
summary table from era files to fully support historical queries
To test this, `ncli_db` has an era file exporter: the files it creates
should be placed in an `era` folder next to `db` in the data directory.
What's interesting in particular about this setup is that `db` remains
as the source of truth for security purposes - it stores the latest
synced head root which in turn determines where a node "starts" its
consensus participation - the era directory however can be freely shared
between nodes / people without any (significant) security implications,
assuming the era files are consistent / not broken.
There's lots of future improvements to be had:
* we can drop the in-memory `BlockRef` index almost entirely - at this
point, resident memory usage of Nimbus should drop to a cool 500-600 mb
* we could serve era files via REST trivially: this would drop backfill
times to whatever time it takes to download the files - unlike the
current implementation that downloads block by block, downloading an era
at a time almost entirely cuts out request overhead
* we can "reasonably" recreate detailed state history from almost any
point in time, turning an O(slot) process into O(1) effectively - we'll
still need caches and indices to do this with sufficient efficiency for
the rest api, but at least it cuts the whole process down to minutes
instead of hours, for arbitrary points in time
* CI: ignore failures with Nim-1.6 (temporary)
* test fixes
Co-authored-by: Ștefan Talpalaru <stefantalpalaru@yahoo.com>
tersec
Etan Kissling
Jacek Sieka
Miran
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