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.
* 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".
* 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.
With checkpoint sync in particular, and state pruning in the future,
loading states or state-dependent data may fail. This PR adjusts the
code to allow this to be handled gracefully.
In particular, the new availability assumption is that states are always
available for the finalized checkpoint and newer, but may fail for
anything older.
The `tail` remains the point where state loading de-facto fails, meaning
that between the tail and the finalized checkpoint, we can still get
historical data (but code should be prepared to handle this as an
error).
However, to harden the code against long replays, several operations
which are assumed to work only with non-final data (such as gossip
verification and validator duties) now limit their search horizon to
post-finalized data.
* harden several state-dependent operations by logging an error instead
of introducing a panic when state loading fails
* `withState` -> `withUpdatedState` to differentiate from the other
`withState`
* `updateStateData` can now fail if no state is found in database - it
is also hardened against excessively long replays
* `getEpochRef` can now fail when replay fails
* reject blocks with invalid target root - they would be ignored
previously
* fix recursion bug in `isProposed`
* 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
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
* add blockchain_dag altair database reading; add rollback tests; fix some unnecessary type conversions
* remove debugging scaffolding
* proposeSignedBlock() will need to be async for merge; introduce altair types to VC
* add Altair support to the block quarantine
* switch some spec/datatypes imports to spec/datatypes/base
* add Altair support to block_clearance
* allow runtime configuration of Altair transition slot
* enable Altair in block_sim, including in CI
* use ForkedHashedBeaconState in StateData
* fix FAR_FUTURE_EPOCH -> slot overflow; almost always use assign()
* avoid stack allocation in maybeUpgradeStateToAltair()
* create and use dispatch functions for check_attester_slashing(), check_proposer_slashing(), and check_voluntary_exit()
* use getStateRoot() instead of various state.data.hbsPhase0.root
* remove withStateVars.hashedState(), which doesn't work as a design anymore
* introduce spec/datatypes/altair into beacon_chain_db
* fix inefficient codegen for getStateField(largeStateField)
* state_transition_slots() doesn't either need/use blocks or runtime presets
* combine process_slots(HBS)/state_transition_slots(HBS) which differ only in last-slot htr optimization
* getStateField(StateData, ...) was replaced by getStateField(ForkedHashedBeaconState, ...)
* fix rollback
* switch some state_transition(), process_slots, makeTestBlocks(), etc to use ForkedHashedBeaconState
* remove state_transition(phase0.HashedBeaconState)
* remove process_slots(phase0.HashedBeaconState)
* remove state_transition_block(phase0.HashedBeaconState)
* remove unused callWithBS(); separate case expression from if statement
* switch back from nested-ref-object construction to (ref Foo)(Bar())
Instead of keeping a validator key list per EpochRef, this PR introduces
a single shared validator key list in ChainDAG, and cleans up some other
ChainDAG and key-related issues.
The PR does not introduce the validator key list in the state transition
- this is because we batch-check all signatures before entering the spec
code, thus the spec code never hits the cache.
A future refactor should _probably_ remove the threadvar altogether.
There's a few other small fixes in here that make the flow easier to
read:
* fix `var ChainDAGRef` -> `ChainDAGRef`
* fix `var QuarantineRef` -> `QuarantineRef`
* consistent `dag` variable name
* avoid using threadvar pubkey cache in most cases
* better error messages in batch signature checking
* set upper bound on EpochRef cache
* max 32 EpochRef instances
* less memory waste in BlockRef by removing EpochRef seq that is mostly
unused (~20mb)
* less memory waste in dag block lookup by not keeping an extra copy of
digest (~70mb)
* fix `==` and `$` for Eth2Digest
* remove `ChainDAG.tmpState` (~50mb?)
all in all, this branch cuts mainnet memory usage by ~160-180mb and puts
limits on EpochRef cache usage - where normally it hovered around 950mb
before, it's now sitting at 600-700mb on my machine.
* docs
Jacek Sieka
tersec
Mamy Ratsimbazafy