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.
* 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
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!
* REST cleanups
* reject out-of-range committee requests
* print all hex values as lower-case
* allow requesting state information by head state root
* turn `DomainType` into array (follow spec)
* `uint_to_bytesXX` -> `uint_to_bytes` (follow spec)
* fix wrong dependent root in `/eth/v1/validator/duties/proposer/`
* update documentation - `--subscribe-all-subnets` is no longer needed
when using the REST interface with validator clients
* more fixes
* common helpers for dependent block
* remove test rules obsoleted by more strict epoch tests
* fix trailing commas
* Update docs/the_nimbus_book/src/rest-api.md
* Update docs/the_nimbus_book/src/rest-api.md
Co-authored-by: sacha <sacha@status.im>
* 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
This PR fixes two issues with block publishing:
* Gossip-valid blocks are published before integrating them into the
chain, giving broadcasting a head start, both for rest block and
* Outright invalid blocks from the API that could lead to the descoring
of the node are no longer broadcast
Bonus:
* remove undocumented and duplicated `post_v1_validator_block` JSON-RPC
call
* fix stack overflow crash in REST/debug/getStateV2
* introduce `ForkyXxx` for generic type matching of `Xxx` across
branches (SomeHashedBeaconState -> ForkyHashedBeaconState et al) -
`Some` is already used for other types of type classes
* consolidate function naming in BeaconChainDB, use some generics
* import `forks.nim` from other spec modules and move `Forked*` helpers
around to resolve circular imports
* remove `ForkedBeaconState`, use `ForkedHashedBeaconState` throughout
(less data shuffling between the types)
* fix several cases of states being stored on stack in tests, causing
random failures on some platforms
* remove reading json support from ncli - this should be ported to the
rest json reading instead (doesn't currently work because stack sizes)
* cleanups
* use ForkedTrustedSignedBeaconBlock.ionit where appropriate
* move `is_aggregator` to `spec/`
* use `errReject` in a few more places
* update enr fork id when time is auspicious
* use network broadcast functions
* Return Ignore for aggregate signature validation timeouts
...consistently between aggregates and attestations.
* clean up some more reject/ignore rules
* shorten texts a bit
* errReject->checkedReject, use err helpers throughout
* get rid of quarantine in exitpool as well
* Fix getForkSchedule call.
Create cache of all configuration endpoints at node startup.
Add prepareJsonResponse() call to create cached responses.
Mark all procedures with `raises`.
* Add getForkSchedule to VC.
Fix getForkSchedule return type for API.
More `raises` annotations.
Fix VC fork_service.nim.
* Use `push raises` instead of inline `raises`.
* Improvements for REST API aggregated attestations and attestations processing.
* Rename eth2_network.sendXXX procedures to eth2_network.broadcastXXX.
Add broadcastBeaconBlock() and broadcastAggregateAndProof().
Fix links to specification in REST API declarations.
Add implementation for v2 getStateV2().
Add validator_duties.sendXXX procedures which not only broadcast data, but also validate it.
Fix JSON-RPC/REST to use new validator_duties.sendXXX procedures instead of own implementations.
* Fix validator_client online nodes count incorrect value.
Fix aggregate and proof attestation could be sent too late.
* Adding timeout for block wait in attestations processing.
Fix compilation errors.
* Attempt to debug aggregate and proofs.
* Fix Beacon AIP to use `sendAttestation`.
Add link comment to produceBlockV2.
* Add debug logs before publish operation for blocks, attestations and aggregated attestations.
Fix attestations publishing issue.
* logging fixes
`indexInCommnittee` already logged in attestation
Co-authored-by: Jacek Sieka <jacek@status.im>
* send attestations and exit messages on fork-appropriate topic
* document why use wall clock over attestation slot
* centralize some fork-topic-picking-logic in eth2_network
* pick up new test in summary
* allow specified GetTimeFn for testing purposes
* add GenesisTime and use it in eth2_network
* replace GetTimeFn and GenesisTime with GetBeaconTimeFn
* reorganize ssz dependencies
This PR continues the work in
https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/2646,
https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/2779 as well as past
issues with serialization and type, to disentangle SSZ from eth2 and at
the same time simplify imports and exports with a structured approach.
The principal idea here is that when a library wants to introduce SSZ
support, they do so via 3 files:
* `ssz_codecs` which imports and reexports `codecs` - this covers the
basic byte conversions and ensures no overloads get lost
* `xxx_merkleization` imports and exports `merkleization` to specialize
and get access to `hash_tree_root` and friends
* `xxx_ssz_serialization` imports and exports `ssz_serialization` to
specialize ssz for a specific library
Those that need to interact with SSZ always import the `xxx_` versions
of the modules and never `ssz` itself so as to keep imports simple and
safe.
This is similar to how the REST / JSON-RPC serializers are structured in
that someone wanting to serialize spec types to REST-JSON will import
`eth2_rest_serialization` and nothing else.
* split up ssz into a core library that is independendent of eth2 types
* rename `bytes_reader` to `codec` to highlight that it contains coding
and decoding of bytes and native ssz types
* remove tricky List init overload that causes compile issues
* get rid of top-level ssz import
* reenable merkleization tests
* move some "standard" json serializers to spec
* remove `ValidatorIndex` serialization for now
* remove test_ssz_merkleization
* add tests for over/underlong byte sequences
* fix broken seq[byte] test - seq[byte] is not an SSZ type
There are a few things this PR doesn't solve:
* like #2646 this PR is weak on how to handle root and other
dontSerialize fields that "sometimes" should be computed - the same
problem appears in REST / JSON-RPC etc
* Fix a build problem on macOS
* Another way to fix the macOS builds
Co-authored-by: Zahary Karadjov <zahary@gmail.com>
The spec imports are a mess to work with, so this branch cleans them up
a bit to ensure that we avoid generic sandwitches and that importing
stuff generally becomes easier.
* reexport crypto/digest/presets because these are part of the public
symbol set of the rest of the spec types
* don't export `merge` types from `base` - this causes circular deps
* fix circular deps in `ssz/spec_types` - this is the first step in
disentangling ssz from spec
* be explicit about phase0 vs altair - longer term, `altair` will become
the "natural" type set, then merge and so on, so no point in giving
`phase0` special preferential treatment
Simpler module name for stuff that covers forks
* check that runtime config matches database state
* also include some assorted altair cleanups
* use "standard" genesis fork in local testnet to work around missing
runtime config support
This refactoring puts the JSON-RPC and REST APIs on more equal footing
by renaming and moving things around, creating a separation between
client and server, and documenting what they are - the aim is to have a
simple-to-use base to start from when developing API clients, as well as
make it easier to navigate the code when looking for the legacy JSON-RPC
interface vs the new REST API.
* move REST client, serialization and supporting types to spec/eth2_apis
* REST stuff now starts with `rest_`, JSON-RPC stuff starts with `rpc_`,
more or less
* simplify imports such that there's a simple module to import for both
server and client
* map REST type and proc names to yaml spec more closely - in
particular, reuse operation and type names in `rest_types` to make
comparisons against spec more easy
* cleaner separation between client and server modules - modules common
between server and client such as `rest_types` and serialization move to
the spec folder - this allows the client to be built with less knowledge
about server internals
Jacek Sieka
Mamy Ratsimbazafy
Etan Kissling
tersec
Eugene Kabanov