* Add first efforts at broadcast
* Tidy
* Move broadcast code to client
* Progress with broadcast impl
* Rename to address change
* Fix compile errors
* Use `while` loop
* Tidy
* Flip broadcast condition
* Switch to forgetting individual indices
* Always broadcast when the node starts
* Refactor into two functions
* Add testing
* Add another test
* Tidy, add more testing
* Tidy
* Add test, rename enum
* Rename enum again
* Tidy
* Break loop early
* Add V15 schema migration
* Bump schema version
* Progress with migration
* Update beacon_node/client/src/address_change_broadcast.rs
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <micsproul@gmail.com>
* Fix typo in function name
---------
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <micsproul@gmail.com>
* 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
## Issue Addressed
New lints for rust 1.65
## Proposed Changes
Notable change is the identification or parameters that are only used in recursion
## Additional Info
na
## Proposed Changes
This PR has two aims: to speed up attestation packing in the op pool, and to fix bugs in the verification of attester slashings, proposer slashings and voluntary exits. The changes are bundled into a single database schema upgrade (v12).
Attestation packing is sped up by removing several inefficiencies:
- No more recalculation of `attesting_indices` during packing.
- No (unnecessary) examination of the `ParticipationFlags`: a bitfield suffices. See `RewardCache`.
- No re-checking of attestation validity during packing: the `AttestationMap` provides attestations which are "correct by construction" (I have checked this using Hydra).
- No SSZ re-serialization for the clunky `AttestationId` type (it can be removed in a future release).
So far the speed-up seems to be roughly 2-10x, from 500ms down to 50-100ms.
Verification of attester slashings, proposer slashings and voluntary exits is fixed by:
- Tracking the `ForkVersion`s that were used to verify each message inside the `SigVerifiedOp`. This allows us to quickly re-verify that they match the head state's opinion of what the `ForkVersion` should be at the epoch(s) relevant to the message.
- Storing the `SigVerifiedOp` on disk rather than the raw operation. This allows us to continue track the fork versions after a reboot.
This is mostly contained in this commit 52bb1840ae5c4356a8fc3a51e5df23ed65ed2c7f.
## Additional Info
The schema upgrade uses the justified state to re-verify attestations and compute `attesting_indices` for them. It will drop any attestations that fail to verify, by the logic that attestations are most valuable in the few slots after they're observed, and are probably stale and useless by the time a node restarts. Exits and proposer slashings and similarly re-verified to obtain `SigVerifiedOp`s.
This PR contains a runtime killswitch `--paranoid-block-proposal` which opts out of all the optimisations in favour of closely verifying every included message. Although I'm quite sure that the optimisations are correct this flag could be useful in the event of an unforeseen emergency.
Finally, you might notice that the `RewardCache` appears quite useless in its current form because it is only updated on the hot-path immediately before proposal. My hope is that in future we can shift calls to `RewardCache::update` into the background, e.g. while performing the state advance. It is also forward-looking to `tree-states` compatibility, where iterating and indexing `state.{previous,current}_epoch_participation` is expensive and needs to be minimised.
## 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
NA
## Proposed Changes
- Uses a `Vec` in `SingleEpochParticipationCache` rather than `HashMap` to speed up processing times at the cost of memory usage.
- Cache the result of `integer_sqrt` rather than recomputing for each validator.
- Cache `state.previous_epoch` rather than recomputing it for each validator.
### Benchmarks
Benchmarks on a recent mainnet state using #3252 to get timing.
#### Without this PR
```
lcli skip-slots --state-path /tmp/state-0x3cdc.ssz --partial-state-advance --slots 32 --state-root 0x3cdc33cd02713d8d6cc33a6dbe2d3a5bf9af1d357de0d175a403496486ff845e --runs 10
[2022-06-09T08:21:02Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Using mainnet spec
[2022-06-09T08:21:02Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Advancing 32 slots
[2022-06-09T08:21:02Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Doing 10 runs
[2022-06-09T08:21:02Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] State path: "/tmp/state-0x3cdc.ssz"
SSZ decoding /tmp/state-0x3cdc.ssz: 43ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:03Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 0: 245.718794ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:03Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 1: 245.364782ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:03Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 2: 255.866179ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:04Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 3: 243.838909ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:04Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 4: 250.431425ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:04Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 5: 248.68765ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:04Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 6: 262.051113ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:05Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 7: 264.293967ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:05Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 8: 293.202007ms
[2022-06-09T08:21:05Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 9: 264.552017ms
```
#### With this PR:
```
lcli skip-slots --state-path /tmp/state-0x3cdc.ssz --partial-state-advance --slots 32 --state-root 0x3cdc33cd02713d8d6cc33a6dbe2d3a5bf9af1d357de0d175a403496486ff845e --runs 10
[2022-06-09T08:57:59Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 0: 73.898678ms
[2022-06-09T08:57:59Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 1: 75.536978ms
[2022-06-09T08:57:59Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 2: 75.176104ms
[2022-06-09T08:57:59Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 3: 76.460828ms
[2022-06-09T08:57:59Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 4: 75.904195ms
[2022-06-09T08:58:00Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 5: 75.53077ms
[2022-06-09T08:58:00Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 6: 74.745572ms
[2022-06-09T08:58:00Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 7: 75.823489ms
[2022-06-09T08:58:00Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 8: 74.892055ms
[2022-06-09T08:58:00Z INFO lcli::skip_slots] Run 9: 76.333569ms
```
## Additional Info
NA
## 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
Lots of lint updates related to `flat_map`, `unwrap_or_else` and string patterns. I did a little more creative refactoring in the op pool, but otherwise followed Clippy's suggestions.
## Additional Info
We need this PR to unblock CI.
## Proposed Changes
Add several metrics for the number of attestations in the op pool. These give us a way to observe the number of valid, non-trivial attestations during block packing rather than just the size of the entire op pool.
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Adds some more testing for Altair to the op pool. Credits to @michaelsproul for some appropriated efforts here.
## Additional Info
NA
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <michael@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
This PR is near-identical to https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/2652, however it is to be merged into `unstable` instead of `merge-f2f`. Please see that PR for reasoning.
I'm making this duplicate PR to merge to `unstable` in an effort to shrink the diff between `unstable` and `merge-f2f` by doing smaller, lead-up PRs.
## Additional Info
NA
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Implements the "union" type from the SSZ spec for `ssz`, `ssz_derive`, `tree_hash` and `tree_hash_derive` so it may be derived for `enums`:
https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/v1.1.0-beta.3/ssz/simple-serialize.md#union
The union type is required for the merge, since the `Transaction` type is defined as a single-variant union `Union[OpaqueTransaction]`.
### Crate Updates
This PR will (hopefully) cause CI to publish new versions for the following crates:
- `eth2_ssz_derive`: `0.2.1` -> `0.3.0`
- `eth2_ssz`: `0.3.0` -> `0.4.0`
- `eth2_ssz_types`: `0.2.0` -> `0.2.1`
- `tree_hash`: `0.3.0` -> `0.4.0`
- `tree_hash_derive`: `0.3.0` -> `0.4.0`
These these crates depend on each other, I've had to add a workspace-level `[patch]` for these crates. A follow-up PR will need to remove this patch, ones the new versions are published.
### Union Behaviors
We already had SSZ `Encode` and `TreeHash` derive for enums, however it just did a "transparent" pass-through of the inner value. Since the "union" decoding from the spec is in conflict with the transparent method, I've required that all `enum` have exactly one of the following enum-level attributes:
#### SSZ
- `#[ssz(enum_behaviour = "union")]`
- matches the spec used for the merge
- `#[ssz(enum_behaviour = "transparent")]`
- maintains existing functionality
- not supported for `Decode` (never was)
#### TreeHash
- `#[tree_hash(enum_behaviour = "union")]`
- matches the spec used for the merge
- `#[tree_hash(enum_behaviour = "transparent")]`
- maintains existing functionality
This means that we can maintain the existing transparent behaviour, but all existing users will get a compile-time error until they explicitly opt-in to being transparent.
### Legacy Option Encoding
Before this PR, we already had a union-esque encoding for `Option<T>`. However, this was with the *old* SSZ spec where the union selector was 4 bytes. During merge specification, the spec was changed to use 1 byte for the selector.
Whilst the 4-byte `Option` encoding was never used in the spec, we used it in our database. Writing a migrate script for all occurrences of `Option` in the database would be painful, especially since it's used in the `CommitteeCache`. To avoid the migrate script, I added a serde-esque `#[ssz(with = "module")]` field-level attribute to `ssz_derive` so that we can opt into the 4-byte encoding on a field-by-field basis.
The `ssz::legacy::four_byte_impl!` macro allows a one-liner to define the module required for the `#[ssz(with = "module")]` for some `Option<T> where T: Encode + Decode`.
Notably, **I have removed `Encode` and `Decode` impls for `Option`**. I've done this to force a break on downstream users. Like I mentioned, `Option` isn't used in the spec so I don't think it'll be *that* annoying. I think it's nicer than quietly having two different union implementations or quietly breaking the existing `Option` impl.
### Crate Publish Ordering
I've modified the order in which CI publishes crates to ensure that we don't publish a crate without ensuring we already published a crate that it depends upon.
## TODO
- [ ] Queue a follow-up `[patch]`-removing PR.
## Proposed Changes
Cache the total active balance for the current epoch in the `BeaconState`. Computing this value takes around 1ms, and this was negatively impacting block processing times on Prater, particularly when reconstructing states.
With a large number of attestations in each block, I saw the `process_attestations` function taking 150ms, which means that reconstructing hot states can take up to 4.65s (31 * 150ms), and reconstructing freezer states can take up to 307s (2047 * 150ms).
I opted to add the cache to the beacon state rather than computing the total active balance at the start of state processing and threading it through. Although this would be simpler in a way, it would waste time, particularly during block replay, as the total active balance doesn't change for the duration of an epoch. So we save ~32ms for hot states, and up to 8.1s for freezer states (using `--slots-per-restore-point 8192`).
## Issue Addressed
N/A
## Proposed Changes
- Removing a bunch of unnecessary references
- Updated `Error::VariantError` to `Error::Variant`
- There were additional enum variant lints that I ignored, because I thought our variant names were fine
- removed `MonitoredValidator`'s `pubkey` field, because I couldn't find it used anywhere. It looks like we just use the string version of the pubkey (the `id` field) if there is no index
## Additional Info
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@gmail.com>
## Proposed Changes
Implement the consensus changes necessary for the upcoming Altair hard fork.
## Additional Info
This is quite a heavy refactor, with pivotal types like the `BeaconState` and `BeaconBlock` changing from structs to enums. This ripples through the whole codebase with field accesses changing to methods, e.g. `state.slot` => `state.slot()`.
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@gmail.com>
## Proposed Changes
Use two instances of max cover when packing attestations into blocks: one for the previous epoch, and one for the current epoch. This reduces the amount of computation done by roughly half due to the `O(n^2)` running time of max cover (`2 * (n/2)^2 = n^2/2`). This should help alleviate some load on block proposal, particularly on Prater.
## Issue Addressed
Catching up on a few eth2 spec updates:
## Proposed Changes
- adding query params to the `GET pool/attestations` endpoint
- allowing the `POST pool/attestations` endpoint to accept an array of attestations
- batching attestation submission
- moving `epoch` from a path param to a query param in the `committees` endpoint
## Additional Info
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@gmail.com>
## Issue Addressed
*Should* address #1917
## Proposed Changes
Stops the `BackgroupMigrator` rx channel from backing up with big `BeaconState` messages.
Looking at some logs from my Medalla node, we can see a discrepancy between the head finalized epoch and the migrator finalized epoch:
```
Nov 17 16:50:21.606 DEBG Head beacon block slot: 129214, root: 0xbc7a…0b99, finalized_epoch: 4033, finalized_root: 0xf930…6562, justified_epoch: 4035, justified_root: 0x206b…9321, service: beacon
Nov 17 16:50:21.626 DEBG Batch processed service: sync, processed_blocks: 43, last_block_slot: 129214, chain: 8274002112260436595, first_block_slot: 129153, batch_epoch: 4036
Nov 17 16:50:21.626 DEBG Chain advanced processing_target: 4036, new_start: 4036, previous_start: 4034, chain: 8274002112260436595, service: sync
Nov 17 16:50:22.162 DEBG Completed batch received awaiting_batches: 5, blocks: 47, epoch: 4048, chain: 8274002112260436595, service: sync
Nov 17 16:50:22.162 DEBG Requesting batch start_slot: 129601, end_slot: 129664, downloaded: 0, processed: 0, state: Downloading(16Uiu2HAmG3C3t1McaseReECjAF694tjVVjkDoneZEbxNhWm1nZaT, 0 blocks, 1273), epoch: 4050, chain: 8274002112260436595, service: sync
Nov 17 16:50:22.654 DEBG Database compaction complete service: beacon
Nov 17 16:50:22.655 INFO Starting database pruning new_finalized_epoch: 2193, old_finalized_epoch: 2192, service: beacon
```
I believe this indicates that the migrator rx has a backed-up queue of `MigrationNotification` items which each contain a `BeaconState`.
## TODO
- [x] Remove finalized state requirement for op-pool
## Issue Addressed
Closes#1769Closes#1708
## Proposed Changes
Tweaks the op pool pruning so that the attestation pool is pruned against the wall-clock epoch instead of the finalized state's epoch. This should reduce the unbounded growth that we've seen during periods without finality.
Also fixes up the voluntary exit pruning as raised in #1708.
## Issue Addressed
Closes#1548
## Proposed Changes
Optimizes attester slashing choice by choosing the ones that cover the most amount of validators slashed, with the highest effective balances
## Additional Info
Initial pass, need to write a test for it
- Resolves#1550
- Resolves#824
- Resolves#825
- Resolves#1131
- Resolves#1411
- Resolves#1256
- Resolve#1177
- Includes the `ShufflingId` struct initially defined in #1492. That PR is now closed and the changes are included here, with significant bug fixes.
- Implement the https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-APIs in a new `http_api` crate using `warp`. This replaces the `rest_api` crate.
- Add a new `common/eth2` crate which provides a wrapper around `reqwest`, providing the HTTP client that is used by the validator client and for testing. This replaces the `common/remote_beacon_node` crate.
- Create a `http_metrics` crate which is a dedicated server for Prometheus metrics (they are no longer served on the same port as the REST API). We now have flags for `--metrics`, `--metrics-address`, etc.
- Allow the `subnet_id` to be an optional parameter for `VerifiedUnaggregatedAttestation::verify`. This means it does not need to be provided unnecessarily by the validator client.
- Move `fn map_attestation_committee` in `mod beacon_chain::attestation_verification` to a new `fn with_committee_cache` on the `BeaconChain` so the same cache can be used for obtaining validator duties.
- Add some other helpers to `BeaconChain` to assist with common API duties (e.g., `block_root_at_slot`, `head_beacon_block_root`).
- Change the `NaiveAggregationPool` so it can index attestations by `hash_tree_root(attestation.data)`. This is a requirement of the API.
- Add functions to `BeaconChainHarness` to allow it to create slashings and exits.
- Allow for `eth1::Eth1NetworkId` to go to/from a `String`.
- Add functions to the `OperationPool` to allow getting all objects in the pool.
- Add function to `BeaconState` to check if a committee cache is initialized.
- Fix bug where `seconds_per_eth1_block` was not transferring over from `YamlConfig` to `ChainSpec`.
- Add the `deposit_contract_address` to `YamlConfig` and `ChainSpec`. We needed to be able to return it in an API response.
- Change some uses of serde `serialize_with` and `deserialize_with` to a single use of `with` (code quality).
- Impl `Display` and `FromStr` for several BLS fields.
- Check for clock discrepancy when VC polls BN for sync state (with +/- 1 slot tolerance). This is not intended to be comprehensive, it was just easy to do.
- See #1434 for a per-endpoint overview.
- Seeking clarity here: https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-APIs/issues/75
- [x] Add docs for prom port to close#1256
- [x] Follow up on this #1177
- [x] ~~Follow up with #1424~~ Will fix in future PR.
- [x] Follow up with #1411
- [x] ~~Follow up with #1260~~ Will fix in future PR.
- [x] Add quotes to all integers.
- [x] Remove `rest_types`
- [x] Address missing beacon block error. (#1629)
- [x] ~~Add tests for lighthouse/peers endpoints~~ Wontfix
- [x] ~~Follow up with validator status proposal~~ Tracked in #1434
- [x] Unify graffiti structs
- [x] ~~Start server when waiting for genesis?~~ Will fix in future PR.
- [x] TODO in http_api tests
- [x] Move lighthouse endpoints off /eth/v1
- [x] Update docs to link to standard
- ~~Blocked on #1586~~
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <michael@sigmaprime.io>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
- Refactor the `bls` crate to support multiple BLS "backends" (e.g., milagro, blst, etc).
- Removes some duplicate, unused code in `common/rest_types/src/validator.rs`.
- Removes the old "upgrade legacy keypairs" functionality (these were unencrypted keys that haven't been supported for a few testnets, no one should be using them anymore).
## Additional Info
Most of the files changed are just inconsequential changes to function names.
## TODO
- [x] Optimization levels
- [x] Infinity point: https://github.com/supranational/blst/issues/11
- [x] Ensure milagro *and* blst are tested via CI
- [x] What to do with unsafe code?
- [x] Test infinity point in signature sets
* Process exits and slashings off the network
* Fix rest_api tests
* Add op verification tests
* Add tests for pruning of slashings in the op pool
* Address Paul's review comments
* Remove redundant method
* Pull out a method out of a struct
* More precise db access abstractions
* Move fake trait method out of it
* cargo fmt
* Fix compilation error after refactoring
* Move another fake method out the Store trait
* Get rid of superfluous method
* Fix refactoring bug
* Rename: SimpleStoreItem -> StoreItem
* Get rid of the confusing DiskStore type alias
* Get rid of SimpleDiskStore type alias
* Correction: A method took both self and a ref to Self
