laconicd/docs/spec/transactions
Aleksandr Bezobchuk 8ca5a1c043 Update tx spec doc
2018-08-30 17:55:45 -04:00
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README.md Update tx spec doc 2018-08-30 17:55:45 -04:00

Transactions

NOTE: The specification documented below is still highly active in development and subject to change.

Routing

Ethermint needs to parse and handle transactions routed for both the EVM and for the Cosmos hub. We attempt to achieve this by mimicking Geth's Transaction structure and utilizing the Payload as the potential encoding of a Cosmos-routed transaction. What designates this encoding, and ultimately routing, is the Recipient address -- if this address matches some global unique predefined and configured address, we regard it as a transaction meant for Cosmos, otherwise, the transaction is a pure Ethereum transaction and will be executed in the EVM.

For Cosmos routed transactions, the Transaction.Payload will contain an Amino encoded embedded transaction that must implement the sdk.Tx interface. Note, the embedding (outer) Transaction is still RLP encoded in order to preserve compatibility with existing tooling. In addition, at launch, Ethermint will only support the auth.StdTx embedded Cosmos transaction type.

Being that Ethermint implements the Tendermint ABCI application interface, as transactions are consumed, they are passed through a series of handlers. Once such handler, runTx, is responsible for invoking the TxDecoder which performs the business logic of properly deserializing raw transaction bytes into either an Ethereum transaction or a Cosmos transaction.

Note: Our goal is to utilize Geth as a library, at least as much as possible, so it should be expected that these types and the operations you may perform on them will keep in line with Ethereum (e.g. signature algorithms and gas/fees). In addition, we aim to have existing tooling and frameworks in the Ethereum ecosystem have 100% compatibility with creating transactions in Ethermint.

Transactions & Messages

The SDK distinguishes between transactions (sdk.Tx) and messages (sdk.Msg). A sdk.Tx is a list of sdk.Msg wrapped with authentication and fee data. Users can create messages containing arbitrary information by implementing the sdk.Msg interface.

In Ethermint, the Transaction type implements the Cosmos SDK sdk.Tx interface. It addition, it implements the Cosmos SDK sdk.Msg interface for the sole purpose of being to perform basic validation checks in the BaseApp. It, however, has no distinction between transactions and messages.

Signatures

Ethermint supports EIP-155 signatures. A Transaction is expected to have a single signature for Ethereum routed transactions. However, just as in Cosmos, Ethermint will support multiple signers for embedded Cosmos routed transactions. Signatures over the Transaction type are identical to Ethereum. However, the embedded transaction contains a canonical signature structure that contains the signature itself and other information such as an account's sequence number. This, in addition to the chainID, helps prevent "replay attacks", where the same message could be executed over and over again.

An embedded transaction's list of signatures must much the unique list of addresses returned by each message's GetSigners call. In addition, the address of first signer of the embedded transaction is responsible for paying the fees.

Gas & Fees

TODO