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)
* merge LC db into main BN db
To treat derived LC data similar to derived state caches, merge it into
the main beacon node DB.
* shorten table names, group with lc prefix
This PR makes the necessary adjustments to deal with the revamped snappy
API.
In practical terms for nimbus-eth2, there are performance increases to
gossip processing, database reading and writing as well as era file
processing. Exporting `.era` files for example, a snappy-heavy
operation, almost halves in total processing time:
Pre:
```
Average, StdDev, Min, Max, Samples, Test
39.088, 8.735, 23.619, 53.301, 50, tState
237.079, 46.692, 165.620, 355.481, 49, tBlocks
```
Post:
```
All time are ms
Average, StdDev, Min, Max, Samples, Test
25.350, 5.303, 15.351, 41.856, 50, tState
141.238, 24.164, 99.990, 199.329, 49, tBlocks
```
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` files and Req/Resp protocols use framed formats - aligning the
database with these makes for less recompression work overall as gossip
is sent only once while req/resp repeats (potentially) - this also
allows efficient pruning-to-era where snappy-recompression is the major
cycle thief.
* 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>
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 performing trusted node sync, historical access is limited to
states after the checkpoint.
Reindexing restores full historical access by replaying historical
blocks against the state and storing snapshots in the database.
The process can be initiated or resumed at any point in time.
This PR names and documents the concept of the archive: a range of slots
for which we have degraded functionality in terms of historical access -
in particular:
* we don't support rewinding to states in this range
* we don't keep an in-memory representation of the block dag
The archive de-facto exists in a trusted-node-synced node, but this PR
gives it a name and drops the in-memory digest index.
In order to satisfy `GetBlocksByRange` requests, we ensure that we have
blocks for the entire archive period via backfill. Future versions may
relax this further, adding a "pre-archive" period that is fully pruned.
During by-slot searches in the archive (both for libp2p and rest
requests), an extra database lookup is used to covert the given `slot`
to a `root` - future versions will avoid this using era files which
natively are indexed by `slot`. That said, the lookup is quite
fast compared to the actual block loading given how trivial the table
is - it's hard to measure, even.
A collateral benefit of this PR is that checkpoint-synced nodes will see
100-200MB memory usage savings, thanks to the dropped in-memory cache -
future pruning work will bring this benefit to full nodes as well.
* document chaindag storage architecture and assumptions
* look up parent using block id instead of full block in clearance
(future-proofing the code against a future in which blocks come from era
files)
* simplify finalized block init, always writing the backfill portion to
db at startup (to ensure lookups work as expected)
* preallocate some extra memory for finalized blocks, to avoid immediate
realloc
To calculate the deltas correctly, the `process_inactivity_updates` function
must be called before the rewards and penalties processing code in order to
update the `inactivity_scores` field in the state. This would have required
duplicating more logic from the spec in the ncli modules, so I've decided to
pay the price of introducing a run-time copy of the state at each epoch which
eliminates the need to duplicate logic (both for this fix and the previous one).
Other changes:
* Fixes for the read-only mode of the `BeaconChainDb`
* Fix an uint64 underflow in the debug output procedure for printing
balance deltas
* Allow Bellatrix states in the reward computation helpers
Streamline lookup with Forky and BeaconBlockFork (then we can do the
same for era)
We use type to avoid conditionals, as fork is often already known at a
"higher" level.
* load blockid before loading block by root - this is needed to map root
to slot and will eventually be done via block summary table for "old"
blocks
Co-authored-by: tersec <tersec@users.noreply.github.com>
Update several `ncli_db` commands to run in readOnly mode, allowing them
to be used with a running instance - in particular era export.
* export all eras by default
* skip already-exported eras
* clean up / document init
* drop `immutable_validators` data (pre-altair)
* document versions where data is first added
* avoid needlessly loading genesis block data on startup
* add a few more internal database consistency checks
* remove duplicate state root lookup on state load
* comment
* 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
This is an alternative take on https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/3107
that aims for more minimal interventions in the spec modules at the expense of
duplicating more of the spec logic in ncli_db.
Overhaul of era files, including documentation and reference
implementations
* store blocks, then state, then slot indices for easy lookup at low
cost
* document era file rationale
* altair+ support in era writer
Introduced in #3171, it turns out we can just follow the block headers
to achieve the same effect
* leaves the constant in the code so as to avoid confusion when reading
database that had the constant written (such as the fleet nodes and
other unstable users)
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
Turning uncompressed pubkeys into cooked ones is fast, but unnecessary -
this should avoid a little work for every signature validation we do by
pre-loading them at startup.
* ncli_db: add putState, putBlock
These tools allow modifying an existing nimbus database for the purpose
of recovery or reorg, moving the head, tail and genesis to arbitrary
points.
* remove potentially expensive `putState` in `BeaconStateDB`
* introduce `latest_block_root` which computes the root of the latest
applied block from the `latest_block_header` field (instead of passing
it in separately)
* avoid some unnecessary BeaconState copies during init
* discover https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/19094
* prefer `HashedBeaconState` in a few places to avoid recomputing state
root
* fetch latest block root from state when creating blocks
* harden `get_beacon_proposer_index` against invalid slots and document
* move random spec function tests to `test_spec.nim`
* avoid unnecessary state root computation before block proposal
* 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)
* 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
* update validator key cache on startup
Versions prior to 1.1.0 do not write a validator key cache at all.
Versions from 1.4.0 and upwards require an immutable validator key cache
to verify blocks - normally, block verification fills the cache but that
assumes that at least one block was verified by a version that has the
key cache.
Taken together, this breaks direct upgrades from anything <1.1.0 to
1.4.0.
The fix is simply to refresh fill the cache from an existing state on
startup.
* also log serious block validation failures at info level
* Implement split preset/config support
This is the initial bulk refactor to introduce runtime config values in
a number of places, somewhat replacing the existing mechanism of loading
network metadata.
It still needs more work, this is the initial refactor that introduces
runtime configuration in some of the places that need it.
The PR changes the way presets and constants work, to match the spec. In
particular, a "preset" now refers to the compile-time configuration
while a "cfg" or "RuntimeConfig" is the dynamic part.
A single binary can support either mainnet or minimal, but not both.
Support for other presets has been removed completely (can be readded,
in case there's need).
There's a number of outstanding tasks:
* `SECONDS_PER_SLOT` still needs fixing
* loading custom runtime configs needs redoing
* checking constants against YAML file
* yeerongpilly support
`build/nimbus_beacon_node --network=yeerongpilly --discv5:no --log-level=DEBUG`
* load fork epoch from config
* fix fork digest sent in status
* nicer error string for request failures
* fix tools
* one more
* fixup
* fixup
* fixup
* use "standard" network definition folder in local testnet
Files are loaded from their standard locations, including genesis etc,
to conform to the format used in the `eth2-networks` repo.
* fix launch scripts, allow unknown config values
* fix base config of rest test
* cleanups
* bundle mainnet config using common loader
* fix spec links and names
* only include supported preset in binary
* drop yeerongpilly, add altair-devnet-0, support boot_enr.yaml
* 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
* introduce immutable Altair BeaconState
* add database support for Altair blocks and states
* add tests for Altair get/put/contains/delete state
* enable blockchain_dag Altair state database storing
* properly return error on getting missing altair block
tersec
Jacek Sieka
zah
Miran
Etan Kissling
zah