## Proposed Changes
Clippy 1.67.0 put us on blast for the size of some of our errors, most of them written by me ( 👀 ). This PR shrinks the size of `BeaconChainError` by dropping some extraneous info and boxing an inner error which should only occur infrequently anyway.
For the `AttestationSlashInfo` and `BlockSlashInfo` I opted to ignore the lint as they are always used in a `Result<A, Info>` where `A` is a similar size. This means they don't bloat the size of the `Result`, so it's a bit annoying for Clippy to report this as an issue.
I also chose to ignore `clippy::uninlined-format-args` because I think the benefit-to-churn ratio is too low. E.g. sometimes we have long identifiers in `format!` args and IMO the non-inlined form is easier to read:
```rust
// I prefer this...
format!(
"{} did {} to {}",
REALLY_LONG_CONSTANT_NAME,
ANOTHER_REALLY_LONG_CONSTANT_NAME,
regular_long_identifier_name
);
// To this
format!("{REALLY_LONG_CONSTANT_NAME} did {ANOTHER_REALLY_LONG_CONSTANT_NAME} to {regular_long_identifier_name}");
```
I tried generating an automatic diff with `cargo clippy --fix` but it came out at:
```
250 files changed, 1209 insertions(+), 1469 deletions(-)
```
Which seems like a bad idea when we'd have to back-merge it to `capella` and `eip4844` 😱
* Import BLS to execution changes before Capella
* Test for BLS to execution change HTTP API
* Pack BLS to execution changes in LIFO order
* Remove unused var
* Clippy
## Proposed Changes
With proposer boosting implemented (#2822) we have an opportunity to re-org out late blocks.
This PR adds three flags to the BN to control this behaviour:
* `--disable-proposer-reorgs`: turn aggressive re-orging off (it's on by default).
* `--proposer-reorg-threshold N`: attempt to orphan blocks with less than N% of the committee vote. If this parameter isn't set then N defaults to 20% when the feature is enabled.
* `--proposer-reorg-epochs-since-finalization N`: only attempt to re-org late blocks when the number of epochs since finalization is less than or equal to N. The default is 2 epochs, meaning re-orgs will only be attempted when the chain is finalizing optimally.
For safety Lighthouse will only attempt a re-org under very specific conditions:
1. The block being proposed is 1 slot after the canonical head, and the canonical head is 1 slot after its parent. i.e. at slot `n + 1` rather than building on the block from slot `n` we build on the block from slot `n - 1`.
2. The current canonical head received less than N% of the committee vote. N should be set depending on the proposer boost fraction itself, the fraction of the network that is believed to be applying it, and the size of the largest entity that could be hoarding votes.
3. The current canonical head arrived after the attestation deadline from our perspective. This condition was only added to support suppression of forkchoiceUpdated messages, but makes intuitive sense.
4. The block is being proposed in the first 2 seconds of the slot. This gives it time to propagate and receive the proposer boost.
## Additional Info
For the initial idea and background, see: https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2353#issuecomment-950238004
There is also a specification for this feature here: https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/3034
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <micsproul@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: pawan <pawandhananjay@gmail.com>
* add capella gossip boiler plate
* get everything compiling
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <sean@sigmaprime.io
Co-authored-by: Mark Mackey <mark@sigmaprime.io>
* small cleanup
* small cleanup
* cargo fix + some test cleanup
* improve block production
* add fixme for potential panic
Co-authored-by: Mark Mackey <mark@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Fixes an issue introduced in #3574 where I erroneously assumed that a `crossbeam_channel` multiple receiver queue was a *broadcast* queue. This is incorrect, each message will be received by *only one* receiver. The effect of this mistake is these logs:
```
Sep 20 06:56:17.001 INFO Synced slot: 4736079, block: 0xaa8a…180d, epoch: 148002, finalized_epoch: 148000, finalized_root: 0x2775…47f2, exec_hash: 0x2ca5…ffde (verified), peers: 6, service: slot_notifier
Sep 20 06:56:23.237 ERRO Unable to validate attestation error: CommitteeCacheWait(RecvError), peer_id: 16Uiu2HAm2Jnnj8868tb7hCta1rmkXUf5YjqUH1YPj35DCwNyeEzs, type: "aggregated", slot: Slot(4736047), beacon_block_root: 0x88d318534b1010e0ebd79aed60b6b6da1d70357d72b271c01adf55c2b46206c1
```
## Additional Info
NA
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
I have observed scenarios on Goerli where Lighthouse was receiving attestations which reference the same, un-cached shuffling on multiple threads at the same time. Lighthouse was then loading the same state from database and determining the shuffling on multiple threads at the same time. This is unnecessary load on the disk and RAM.
This PR modifies the shuffling cache so that each entry can be either:
- A committee
- A promise for a committee (i.e., a `crossbeam_channel::Receiver`)
Now, in the scenario where we have thread A and thread B simultaneously requesting the same un-cached shuffling, we will have the following:
1. Thread A will take the write-lock on the shuffling cache, find that there's no cached committee and then create a "promise" (a `crossbeam_channel::Sender`) for a committee before dropping the write-lock.
1. Thread B will then be allowed to take the write-lock for the shuffling cache and find the promise created by thread A. It will block the current thread waiting for thread A to fulfill that promise.
1. Thread A will load the state from disk, obtain the shuffling, send it down the channel, insert the entry into the cache and then continue to verify the attestation.
1. Thread B will then receive the shuffling from the receiver, be un-blocked and then continue to verify the attestation.
In the case where thread A fails to generate the shuffling and drops the sender, the next time that specific shuffling is requested we will detect that the channel is disconnected and return a `None` entry for that shuffling. This will cause the shuffling to be re-calculated.
## Additional Info
NA
## Issue Addressed
https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/issues/3091
Extends https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/3062, adding pre-bellatrix block support on blinded endpoints and allowing the normal proposal flow (local payload construction) on blinded endpoints. This resulted in better fallback logic because the VC will not have to switch endpoints on failure in the BN <> Builder API, the BN can just fallback immediately and without repeating block processing that it shouldn't need to. We can also keep VC fallback from the VC<>BN API's blinded endpoint to full endpoint.
## Proposed Changes
- Pre-bellatrix blocks on blinded endpoints
- Add a new `PayloadCache` to the execution layer
- Better fallback-from-builder logic
## Todos
- [x] Remove VC transition logic
- [x] Add logic to only enable builder flow after Merge transition finalization
- [x] Tests
- [x] Fix metrics
- [x] Rustdocs
Co-authored-by: Mac L <mjladson@pm.me>
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <sean@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
Resolves#3151
## Proposed Changes
When fetching duties for sync committee contributions, check the value of `execution_optimistic` of the head block from the BN and refuse to sign any sync committee messages `if execution_optimistic == true`.
## Additional Info
- Is backwards compatible with older BNs
- Finding a way to add test coverage for this would be prudent. Open to suggestions.
## Overview
This rather extensive PR achieves two primary goals:
1. Uses the finalized/justified checkpoints of fork choice (FC), rather than that of the head state.
2. Refactors fork choice, block production and block processing to `async` functions.
Additionally, it achieves:
- Concurrent forkchoice updates to the EL and cache pruning after a new head is selected.
- Concurrent "block packing" (attestations, etc) and execution payload retrieval during block production.
- Concurrent per-block-processing and execution payload verification during block processing.
- The `Arc`-ification of `SignedBeaconBlock` during block processing (it's never mutated, so why not?):
- I had to do this to deal with sending blocks into spawned tasks.
- Previously we were cloning the beacon block at least 2 times during each block processing, these clones are either removed or turned into cheaper `Arc` clones.
- We were also `Box`-ing and un-`Box`-ing beacon blocks as they moved throughout the networking crate. This is not a big deal, but it's nice to avoid shifting things between the stack and heap.
- Avoids cloning *all the blocks* in *every chain segment* during sync.
- It also has the potential to clean up our code where we need to pass an *owned* block around so we can send it back in the case of an error (I didn't do much of this, my PR is already big enough 😅)
- The `BeaconChain::HeadSafetyStatus` struct was removed. It was an old relic from prior merge specs.
For motivation for this change, see https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/3244#issuecomment-1160963273
## Changes to `canonical_head` and `fork_choice`
Previously, the `BeaconChain` had two separate fields:
```
canonical_head: RwLock<Snapshot>,
fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
```
Now, we have grouped these values under a single struct:
```
canonical_head: CanonicalHead {
cached_head: RwLock<Arc<Snapshot>>,
fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
}
```
Apart from ergonomics, the only *actual* change here is wrapping the canonical head snapshot in an `Arc`. This means that we no longer need to hold the `cached_head` (`canonical_head`, in old terms) lock when we want to pull some values from it. This was done to avoid deadlock risks by preventing functions from acquiring (and holding) the `cached_head` and `fork_choice` locks simultaneously.
## Breaking Changes
### The `state` (root) field in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event
Consider the scenario where epoch `n` is just finalized, but `start_slot(n)` is skipped. There are two state roots we might in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event:
1. The state root of the finalized block, which is `get_block(finalized_checkpoint.root).state_root`.
4. The state root at slot of `start_slot(n)`, which would be the state from (1), but "skipped forward" through any skip slots.
Previously, Lighthouse would choose (2). However, we can see that when [Teku generates that event](de2b2801c8/data/beaconrestapi/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/beaconrestapi/handlers/v1/events/EventSubscriptionManager.java (L171-L182)) it uses [`getStateRootFromBlockRoot`](de2b2801c8/data/provider/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/api/ChainDataProvider.java (L336-L341)) which uses (1).
I have switched Lighthouse from (2) to (1). I think it's a somewhat arbitrary choice between the two, where (1) is easier to compute and is consistent with Teku.
## Notes for Reviewers
I've renamed `BeaconChain::fork_choice` to `BeaconChain::recompute_head`. Doing this helped ensure I broke all previous uses of fork choice and I also find it more descriptive. It describes an action and can't be confused with trying to get a reference to the `ForkChoice` struct.
I've changed the ordering of SSE events when a block is received. It used to be `[block, finalized, head]` and now it's `[block, head, finalized]`. It was easier this way and I don't think we were making any promises about SSE event ordering so it's not "breaking".
I've made it so fork choice will run when it's first constructed. I did this because I wanted to have a cached version of the last call to `get_head`. Ensuring `get_head` has been run *at least once* means that the cached values doesn't need to wrapped in an `Option`. This was fairly simple, it just involved passing a `slot` to the constructor so it knows *when* it's being run. When loading a fork choice from the store and a slot clock isn't handy I've just used the `slot` that was saved in the `fork_choice_store`. That seems like it would be a faithful representation of the slot when we saved it.
I added the `genesis_time: u64` to the `BeaconChain`. It's small, constant and nice to have around.
Since we're using FC for the fin/just checkpoints, we no longer get the `0x00..00` roots at genesis. You can see I had to remove a work-around in `ef-tests` here: b56be3bc2. I can't find any reason why this would be an issue, if anything I think it'll be better since the genesis-alias has caught us out a few times (0x00..00 isn't actually a real root). Edit: I did find a case where the `network` expected the 0x00..00 alias and patched it here: 3f26ac3e2.
You'll notice a lot of changes in tests. Generally, tests should be functionally equivalent. Here are the things creating the most diff-noise in tests:
- Changing tests to be `tokio::async` tests.
- Adding `.await` to fork choice, block processing and block production functions.
- Refactor of the `canonical_head` "API" provided by the `BeaconChain`. E.g., `chain.canonical_head.cached_head()` instead of `chain.canonical_head.read()`.
- Wrapping `SignedBeaconBlock` in an `Arc`.
- In the `beacon_chain/tests/block_verification`, we can't use the `lazy_static` `CHAIN_SEGMENT` variable anymore since it's generated with an async function. We just generate it in each test, not so efficient but hopefully insignificant.
I had to disable `rayon` concurrent tests in the `fork_choice` tests. This is because the use of `rayon` and `block_on` was causing a panic.
Co-authored-by: Mac L <mjladson@pm.me>
## Issue Addressed
Upcoming spec change https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2878
## Proposed Changes
1. Run fork choice at the start of every slot, and wait for this run to complete before proposing a block.
2. As an optimisation, also run fork choice 3/4 of the way through the slot (at 9s), _dequeueing attestations for the next slot_.
3. Remove the fork choice run from the state advance timer that occurred before advancing the state.
## Additional Info
### Block Proposal Accuracy
This change makes us more likely to propose on top of the correct head in the presence of re-orgs with proposer boost in play. The main scenario that this change is designed to address is described in the linked spec issue.
### Attestation Accuracy
This change _also_ makes us more likely to attest to the correct head. Currently in the case of a skipped slot at `slot` we only run fork choice 9s into `slot - 1`. This means the attestations from `slot - 1` aren't taken into consideration, and any boost applied to the block from `slot - 1` is not removed (it should be). In the language of the linked spec issue, this means we are liable to attest to C, even when the majority voting weight has already caused a re-org to B.
### Why remove the call before the state advance?
If we've run fork choice at the start of the slot then it has already dequeued all the attestations from the previous slot, which are the only ones eligible to influence the head in the current slot. Running fork choice again is unnecessary (unless we run it for the next slot and try to pre-empt a re-org, but I don't currently think this is a great idea).
### Performance
Based on Prater testing this adds about 5-25ms of runtime to block proposal times, which are 500-1000ms on average (and spike to 5s+ sometimes due to state handling issues 😢 ). I believe this is a small enough penalty to enable it by default, with the option to disable it via the new flag `--fork-choice-before-proposal-timeout 0`. Upcoming work on block packing and state representation will also reduce block production times in general, while removing the spikes.
### Implementation
Fork choice gets invoked at the start of the slot via the `per_slot_task` function called from the slot timer. It then uses a condition variable to signal to block production that fork choice has been updated. This is a bit funky, but it seems to work. One downside of the timer-based approach is that it doesn't happen automatically in most of the tests. The test added by this PR has to trigger the run manually.
## Proposed Changes
Remove support for DB migrations that support upgrading from schema's below version 5. This is mostly for cosmetic/code quality reasons as in most circumstances upgrading from versions of Lighthouse this old will almost always require a re-sync.
## Additional Info
The minimum supported database schema is now version 5.
## Proposed Changes
Reduce post-merge disk usage by not storing finalized execution payloads in Lighthouse's database.
⚠️ **This is achieved in a backwards-incompatible way for networks that have already merged** ⚠️. Kiln users and shadow fork enjoyers will be unable to downgrade after running the code from this PR. The upgrade migration may take several minutes to run, and can't be aborted after it begins.
The main changes are:
- New column in the database called `ExecPayload`, keyed by beacon block root.
- The `BeaconBlock` column now stores blinded blocks only.
- Lots of places that previously used full blocks now use blinded blocks, e.g. analytics APIs, block replay in the DB, etc.
- On finalization:
- `prune_abanonded_forks` deletes non-canonical payloads whilst deleting non-canonical blocks.
- `migrate_db` deletes finalized canonical payloads whilst deleting finalized states.
- Conversions between blinded and full blocks are implemented in a compositional way, duplicating some work from Sean's PR #3134.
- The execution layer has a new `get_payload_by_block_hash` method that reconstructs a payload using the EE's `eth_getBlockByHash` call.
- I've tested manually that it works on Kiln, using Geth and Nethermind.
- This isn't necessarily the most efficient method, and new engine APIs are being discussed to improve this: https://github.com/ethereum/execution-apis/pull/146.
- We're depending on the `ethers` master branch, due to lots of recent changes. We're also using a workaround for https://github.com/gakonst/ethers-rs/issues/1134.
- Payload reconstruction is used in the HTTP API via `BeaconChain::get_block`, which is now `async`. Due to the `async` fn, the `blocking_json` wrapper has been removed.
- Payload reconstruction is used in network RPC to serve blocks-by-{root,range} responses. Here the `async` adjustment is messier, although I think I've managed to come up with a reasonable compromise: the handlers take the `SendOnDrop` by value so that they can drop it on _task completion_ (after the `fn` returns). Still, this is introducing disk reads onto core executor threads, which may have a negative performance impact (thoughts appreciated).
## Additional Info
- [x] For performance it would be great to remove the cloning of full blocks when converting them to blinded blocks to write to disk. I'm going to experiment with a `put_block` API that takes the block by value, breaks it into a blinded block and a payload, stores the blinded block, and then re-assembles the full block for the caller.
- [x] We should measure the latency of blocks-by-root and blocks-by-range responses.
- [x] We should add integration tests that stress the payload reconstruction (basic tests done, issue for more extensive tests: https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/issues/3159)
- [x] We should (manually) test the schema v9 migration from several prior versions, particularly as blocks have changed on disk and some migrations rely on being able to load blocks.
Co-authored-by: Paul Hauner <paul@paulhauner.com>
## Issue Addressed
Fix a panic due to misuse of the Tokio executor when processing a forkchoiceUpdated response. We were previously calling `process_invalid_execution_payload` from the async function `update_execution_engine_forkchoice_async`, which resulted in a panic because `process_invalid_execution_payload` contains a call to fork choice, which ultimately calls `block_on`.
An example backtrace can be found here: https://gist.github.com/michaelsproul/ac5da03e203d6ffac672423eaf52fb20
## Proposed Changes
Wrap the call to `process_invalid_execution_payload` in a `spawn_blocking` so that `block_on` is no longer called from an async context.
## Additional Info
- I've been thinking about how to catch bugs like this with static analysis (a new Clippy lint).
- The payload validation tests have been re-worked to support distinct responses from the mock EE for newPayload and forkchoiceUpdated. Three new tests have been added covering the `Invalid`, `InvalidBlockHash` and `InvalidTerminalBlock` cases.
- I think we need a bunch more tests of different legal and illegal variations
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Disallow the production of attestations and retrieval of unaggregated attestations when they reference an optimistic head. Add tests to this end.
I also moved `BeaconChain::produce_unaggregated_attestation_for_block` to the `BeaconChainHarness`. It was only being used during tests, so it's nice to stop pretending it's production code. I also needed something that could produce attestations to optimistic blocks in order to simulate scenarios where the justified checkpoint is determined invalid (if no one would attest to an optimistic block, we could never justify it and then flip it to invalid).
## Additional Info
- ~~Blocked on #3126~~
## Issue Addressed
Resolves#2936
## Proposed Changes
Adds functionality for calling [`validator/prepare_beacon_proposer`](https://ethereum.github.io/beacon-APIs/?urls.primaryName=dev#/Validator/prepareBeaconProposer) in advance.
There is a `BeaconChain::prepare_beacon_proposer` method which, which called, computes the proposer for the next slot. If that proposer has been registered via the `validator/prepare_beacon_proposer` API method, then the `beacon_chain.execution_layer` will be provided the `PayloadAttributes` for us in all future forkchoiceUpdated calls. An artificial forkchoiceUpdated call will be created 4s before each slot, when the head updates and when a validator updates their information.
Additionally, I added strict ordering for calls from the `BeaconChain` to the `ExecutionLayer`. I'm not certain the `ExecutionLayer` will always maintain this ordering, but it's a good start to have consistency from the `BeaconChain`. There are some deadlock opportunities introduced, they are documented in the code.
## Additional Info
- ~~Blocked on #2837~~
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@GMAIL.com>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Adds the functionality to allow blocks to be validated/invalidated after their import as per the [optimistic sync spec](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/sync/optimistic.md#how-to-optimistically-import-blocks). This means:
- Updating `ProtoArray` to allow flipping the `execution_status` of ancestors/descendants based on payload validity updates.
- Creating separation between `execution_layer` and the `beacon_chain` by creating a `PayloadStatus` struct.
- Refactoring how the `execution_layer` selects a `PayloadStatus` from the multiple statuses returned from multiple EEs.
- Adding testing framework for optimistic imports.
- Add `ExecutionBlockHash(Hash256)` new-type struct to avoid confusion between *beacon block roots* and *execution payload hashes*.
- Add `merge` to [`FORKS`](c3a793fd73/Makefile (L17)) in the `Makefile` to ensure we test the beacon chain with merge settings.
- Fix some tests here that were failing due to a missing execution layer.
## TODO
- [ ] Balance tests
Co-authored-by: Mark Mackey <mark@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
This PR extends #3018 to address my review comments there and add automated integration tests with Geth (and other implementations, in the future).
I've also de-duplicated the "unused port" logic by creating an `common/unused_port` crate.
## Additional Info
I'm not sure if we want to merge this PR, or update #3018 and merge that. I don't mind, I'm primarily opening this PR to make sure CI works.
Co-authored-by: Mark Mackey <mark@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
Successor to #2431
## Proposed Changes
* Add a `BlockReplayer` struct to abstract over the intricacies of calling `per_slot_processing` and `per_block_processing` while avoiding unnecessary tree hashing.
* Add a variant of the forwards state root iterator that does not require an `end_state`.
* Use the `BlockReplayer` when reconstructing states in the database. Use the efficient forwards iterator for frozen states.
* Refactor the iterators to remove `Arc<HotColdDB>` (this seems to be neater than making _everything_ an `Arc<HotColdDB>` as I did in #2431).
Supplying the state roots allow us to avoid building a tree hash cache at all when reconstructing historic states, which saves around 1 second flat (regardless of `slots-per-restore-point`). This is a small percentage of worst-case state load times with 200K validators and SPRP=2048 (~15s vs ~16s) but a significant speed-up for more frequent restore points: state loads with SPRP=32 should be now consistently <500ms instead of 1.5s (a ~3x speedup).
## Additional Info
Required by https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/2628
Fix max packet sizes
Fix max_payload_size function
Add merge block test
Fix max size calculation; fix up test
Clear comments
Add a payload_size_function
Use safe arith for payload calculation
Return an error if block too big in block production
Separate test to check if block is over limit
* Add payload verification status to fork choice
* Pass payload verification status to import_block
* Add valid back-propagation
* Add head safety status latch to API
* Remove ExecutionLayerStatus
* Add execution info to client notifier
* Update notifier logs
* Change use of "hash" to refer to beacon block
* Shutdown on invalid finalized block
* Tidy, add comments
* Fix failing FC tests
* Allow blocks with unsafe head
* Fix forkchoiceUpdate call on startup
## Issue Addressed
Closes#1891Closes#1784
## Proposed Changes
Implement checkpoint sync for Lighthouse, enabling it to start from a weak subjectivity checkpoint.
## Additional Info
- [x] Return unavailable status for out-of-range blocks requested by peers (#2561)
- [x] Implement sync daemon for fetching historical blocks (#2561)
- [x] Verify chain hashes (either in `historical_blocks.rs` or the calling module)
- [x] Consistency check for initial block + state
- [x] Fetch the initial state and block from a beacon node HTTP endpoint
- [x] Don't crash fetching beacon states by slot from the API
- [x] Background service for state reconstruction, triggered by CLI flag or API call.
Considered out of scope for this PR:
- Drop the requirement to provide the `--checkpoint-block` (this would require some pretty heavy refactoring of block verification)
Co-authored-by: Diva M <divma@protonmail.com>
## Proposed Changes
* Implement the validator client and HTTP API changes necessary to support Altair
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <michael@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
- Resolves#2169
## Proposed Changes
Adds the `AttesterCache` to allow validators to produce attestations for older slots. Presently, some arbitrary restrictions can force validators to receive an error when attesting to a slot earlier than the present one. This can cause attestation misses when there is excessive load on the validator client or time sync issues between the VC and BN.
## Additional Info
NA
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Primary Change
When investigating memory usage, I noticed that retrieving a block from an early slot (e.g., slot 900) would cause a sharp increase in the memory footprint (from 400mb to 800mb+) which seemed to be ever-lasting.
After some investigation, I found that the reverse iteration from the head back to that slot was the likely culprit. To counter this, I've switched the `BeaconChain::block_root_at_slot` to use the forwards iterator, instead of the reverse one.
I also noticed that the networking stack is using `BeaconChain::root_at_slot` to check if a peer is relevant (`check_peer_relevance`). Perhaps the steep, seemingly-random-but-consistent increases in memory usage are caused by the use of this function.
Using the forwards iterator with the HTTP API alleviated the sharp increases in memory usage. It also made the response much faster (before it felt like to took 1-2s, now it feels instant).
## Additional Changes
In the process I also noticed that we have two functions for getting block roots:
- `BeaconChain::block_root_at_slot`: returns `None` for a skip slot.
- `BeaconChain::root_at_slot`: returns the previous root for a skip slot.
I unified these two functions into `block_root_at_slot` and added the `WhenSlotSkipped` enum. Now, the caller must be explicit about the skip-slot behaviour when requesting a root.
Additionally, I replaced `vec![]` with `Vec::with_capacity` in `store::chunked_vector::range_query`. I stumbled across this whilst debugging and made this modification to see what effect it would have (not much). It seems like a decent change to keep around, but I'm not concerned either way.
Also, `BeaconChain::get_ancestor_block_root` is unused, so I got rid of it 🗑️.
## Additional Info
I haven't also done the same for state roots here. Whilst it's possible and a good idea, it's more work since the fwds iterators are presently block-roots-specific.
Whilst there's a few places a reverse iteration of state roots could be triggered (e.g., attestation production, HTTP API), they're no where near as common as the `check_peer_relevance` call. As such, I think we should get this PR merged first, then come back for the state root iters. I made an issue here https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/issues/2377.
## Issue Addressed
N/A
## Proposed Changes
Add unit tests for the various CLI flags associated with the beacon node and validator client. These changes require the addition of two new flags: `dump-config` and `immediate-shutdown`.
## Additional Info
Both `dump-config` and `immediate-shutdown` are marked as hidden since they should only be used in testing and other advanced use cases.
**Note:** This requires changing `main.rs` so that the flags can adjust the program behavior as necessary.
Co-authored-by: Paul Hauner <paul@paulhauner.com>
## Issue Addressed
Closes#2052
## Proposed Changes
- Refactor the attester/proposer duties endpoints in the BN
- Performance improvements
- Fixes some potential inconsistencies with the dependent root fields.
- Removes `http_api::beacon_proposer_cache` and just uses the one on the `BeaconChain` instead.
- Move the code for the proposer/attester duties endpoints into separate files, for readability.
- Refactor the `DutiesService` in the VC
- Required to reduce the delay on broadcasting new blocks.
- Gets rid of the `ValidatorDuty` shim struct that came about when we adopted the standard API.
- Separate block/attestation duty tasks so that they don't block each other when one is slow.
- In the VC, use `PublicKeyBytes` to represent validators instead of `PublicKey`. `PublicKey` is a legit crypto object whilst `PublicKeyBytes` is just a byte-array, it's much faster to clone/hash `PublicKeyBytes` and this change has had a significant impact on runtimes.
- Unfortunately this has created lots of dust changes.
- In the BN, store `PublicKeyBytes` in the `beacon_proposer_cache` and allow access to them. The HTTP API always sends `PublicKeyBytes` over the wire and the conversion from `PublicKey` -> `PublickeyBytes` is non-trivial, especially when queries have 100s/1000s of validators (like Pyrmont).
- Add the `state_processing::state_advance` mod which dedups a lot of the "apply `n` skip slots to the state" code.
- This also fixes a bug with some functions which were failing to include a state root as per [this comment](072695284f/consensus/state_processing/src/state_advance.rs (L69-L74)). I couldn't find any instance of this bug that resulted in anything more severe than keying a shuffling cache by the wrong block root.
- Swap the VC block service to use `mpsc` from `tokio` instead of `futures`. This is consistent with the rest of the code base.
~~This PR *reduces* the size of the codebase 🎉~~ It *used* to reduce the size of the code base before I added more comments.
## Observations on Prymont
- Proposer duties times down from peaks of 450ms to consistent <1ms.
- Current epoch attester duties times down from >1s peaks to a consistent 20-30ms.
- Block production down from +600ms to 100-200ms.
## Additional Info
- ~~Blocked on #2241~~
- ~~Blocked on #2234~~
## TODO
- [x] ~~Refactor this into some smaller PRs?~~ Leaving this as-is for now.
- [x] Address `per_slot_processing` roots.
- [x] Investigate slow next epoch times. Not getting added to cache on block processing?
- [x] Consider [this](072695284f/beacon_node/store/src/hot_cold_store.rs (L811-L812)) in the scenario of replacing the state roots
Co-authored-by: pawan <pawandhananjay@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <michael@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
- Use the pre-states from #2174 during block production.
- Running this on Pyrmont shows block production times dropping from ~550ms to ~150ms.
- Create `crit` and `warn` logs when a block is published to the API later than we expect.
- On mainnet we are issuing a warn if the block is published more than 1s later than the slot start and a crit for more than 3s.
- Rename some methods on the `SnapshotCache` for clarity.
- Add the ability to pass the state root to `BeaconChain::produce_block_on_state` to avoid computing a state root. This is a very common LH optimization.
- Add a metric that tracks how late we broadcast blocks received from the HTTP API. This is *technically* a duplicate of a `ValidatorMonitor` log, but I wanted to have it for the case where we aren't monitoring validators too.
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Add an optimization to perform `per_slot_processing` from the *leading-edge* of block processing to the *trailing-edge*. Ultimately, this allows us to import the block at slot `n` faster because we used the tail-end of slot `n - 1` to perform `per_slot_processing`.
Additionally, add a "block proposer cache" which allows us to cache the block proposer for some epoch. Since we're now doing trailing-edge `per_slot_processing`, we can prime this cache with the values for the next epoch before those blocks arrive (assuming those blocks don't have some weird forking).
There were several ancillary changes required to achieve this:
- Remove the `state_root` field of `BeaconSnapshot`, since there's no need to know it on a `pre_state` and in all other cases we can just read it from `block.state_root()`.
- This caused some "dust" changes of `snapshot.beacon_state_root` to `snapshot.beacon_state_root()`, where the `BeaconSnapshot::beacon_state_root()` func just reads the state root from the block.
- Rename `types::ShuffingId` to `AttestationShufflingId`. I originally did this because I added a `ProposerShufflingId` struct which turned out to be not so useful. I thought this new name was more descriptive so I kept it.
- Address https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/2196
- Add a debug log when we get a block with an unknown parent. There was previously no logging around this case.
- Add a function to `BeaconState` to compute all proposers for an epoch without re-computing the active indices for each slot.
## Additional Info
- ~~Blocked on #2173~~
- ~~Blocked on #2179~~ That PR was wrapped into this PR.
- There's potentially some places where we could avoid computing the proposer indices in `per_block_processing` but I haven't done this here. These would be an optimization beyond the issue at hand (improving block propagation times) and I think this PR is already doing enough. We can come back for that later.
## TODO
- [x] Tidy, improve comments.
- [x] ~~Try avoid computing proposer index in `per_block_processing`?~~
## Issue Addressed
The non-finality period on Pyrmont between epochs [`9114`](https://pyrmont.beaconcha.in/epoch/9114) and [`9182`](https://pyrmont.beaconcha.in/epoch/9182) was contributed to by all the `lighthouse_team` validators going down. The nodes saw excessive CPU and RAM usage, resulting in the system to kill the `lighthouse bn` process. The `Restart=on-failure` directive for `systemd` caused the process to bounce in ~10-30m intervals.
Diagnosis with `heaptrack` showed that the `BeaconChain::produce_unaggregated_attestation` function was calling `store::beacon_state::get_full_state` and sometimes resulting in a tree hash cache allocation. These allocations were approximately the size of the hosts physical memory and still allocated when `lighthouse bn` was killed by the OS.
There was no CPU analysis (e.g., `perf`), but the `BeaconChain::produce_unaggregated_attestation` is very CPU-heavy so it is reasonable to assume it is the cause of the excessive CPU usage, too.
## Proposed Changes
`BeaconChain::produce_unaggregated_attestation` has two paths:
1. Fast path: attesting to the head slot or later.
2. Slow path: attesting to a slot earlier than the head block.
Path (2) is the only path that calls `store::beacon_state::get_full_state`, therefore it is the path causing this excessive CPU/RAM usage.
This PR removes the current functionality of path (2) and replaces it with a static error (`BeaconChainError::AttestingPriorToHead`).
This change reduces the generality of `BeaconChain::produce_unaggregated_attestation` (and therefore [`/eth/v1/validator/attestation_data`](https://ethereum.github.io/eth2.0-APIs/#/Validator/produceAttestationData)), but I argue that this functionality is an edge-case and arguably a violation of the [Honest Validator spec](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/dev/specs/phase0/validator.md).
It's possible that a validator goes back to a prior slot to "catch up" and submit some missed attestations. This change would prevent such behaviour, returning an error. My concerns with this catch-up behaviour is that it is:
- Not specified as "honest validator" attesting behaviour.
- Is behaviour that is risky for slashing (although, all validator clients *should* have slashing protection and will eventually fail if they do not).
- It disguises clock-sync issues between a BN and VC.
## Additional Info
It's likely feasible to implement path (2) if we implement some sort of caching mechanism. This would be a multi-week task and this PR gets the issue patched in the short term. I haven't created an issue to add path (2), instead I think we should implement it if we get user-demand.
## Proposed Changes
`@potuz` on the Eth R&D Discord observed that Lighthouse blocks on Pyrmont were always arriving at other nodes after at least 1 second. Part of this could be due to processing and slow propagation, but metrics also revealed that the Lighthouse nodes were usually taking 400-600ms to even just produce a block before broadcasting it.
I tracked the slowness down to the lack of a pre-built tree hash cache (THC) on the states being used for block production. This was due to using the head state for block production, which lacks a THC in order to keep fork choice fast (cloning a THC takes at least 30ms for 100k validators). This PR modifies block production to clone a state from the snapshot cache rather than the head, which speeds things up by 200-400ms by avoiding the tree hash cache rebuild. In practice this seems to have cut block production time down to 300ms or less. Ideally we could _remove_ the snapshot from the cache (and save the 30ms), but it is required for when we re-process the block after signing it with the validator client.
## Alternatives
I experimented with 2 alternatives to this approach, before deciding on it:
* Alternative 1: ensure the `head` has a tree hash cache. This is too slow, as it imposes a +30ms hit on fork choice, which currently takes ~5ms (with occasional spikes).
* Alternative 2: use `Arc<BeaconSnapshot>` in the snapshot cache and share snapshots between the cache and the `head`. This made fork choice blazing fast (1ms), and block production the same as in this PR, but had a negative impact on block processing which I don't think is worth it. It ended up being necessary to clone the full state from the snapshot cache during block production, imposing the +30ms penalty there _as well_ as in block production.
In contract, the approach in this PR should only impact block production, and it improves it! Yay for pareto improvements 🎉
## Additional Info
This commit (ac59dfa) is currently running on all the Lighthouse Pyrmont nodes, and I've added a dashboard to the Pyrmont grafana instance with the metrics.
In future work we should optimise the attestation packing, which consumes around 30-60ms and is now a substantial contributor to the total.
## Issue Addressed
Closes#2028
Replaces #2059
## Proposed Changes
If writing to the database fails while importing a block, revert fork choice to the last version stored on disk. This prevents fork choice from being ahead of the blocks on disk. Having fork choice ahead is particularly bad if it is later successfully written to disk, because it renders the database corrupt (see #2028).
## Additional Info
* This mitigation might fail if the head+fork choice haven't been persisted yet, which can only happen at first startup (see #2067)
* This relies on it being OK for the head tracker to be ahead of fork choice. I figure this is tolerable because blocks only get added to the head tracker after successfully being written on disk _and_ to fork choice, so even if fork choice reverts a little bit, when the pruning algorithm runs, those blocks will still be on disk and OK to prune. The pruning algorithm also doesn't rely on heads being unique, technically it's OK for multiple blocks from the same linear chain segment to be present in the head tracker. This begs the question of #1785 (i.e. things would be simpler with the head tracker out of the way). Alternatively, this PR could just revert the head tracker as well (I'll look into this tomorrow).
