## 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
Add a flag that optionally enables unrealized vote tracking. Would like to test out on testnets and benchmark differences in methods of vote tracking. This PR includes a DB schema upgrade to enable to new vote tracking style.
Co-authored-by: realbigsean <sean@sigmaprime.io>
Co-authored-by: Paul Hauner <paul@paulhauner.com>
Co-authored-by: sean <seananderson33@gmail.com>
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.
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
## Issue Addressed
Mitigates #1096
## Proposed Changes
Add a flag to the beacon node called `--disable-lock-timeouts` which allows opting out of lock timeouts.
The lock timeouts serve a dual purpose:
1. They prevent any single operation from hogging the lock for too long. When a timeout occurs it logs a nasty error which indicates that there's suboptimal lock use occurring, which we can then act on.
2. They allow deadlock detection. We're fairly sure there are no deadlocks left in Lighthouse anymore but the timeout locks offer a safeguard against that.
However, timeouts on locks are not without downsides:
They allow for the possibility of livelock, particularly on slower hardware. If lock timeouts keep failing spuriously the node can be prevented from making any progress, even if it would be able to make progress slowly without the timeout. One particularly concerning scenario which could occur would be if a DoS attack succeeded in slowing block signature verification times across the network, and all Lighthouse nodes got livelocked because they timed out repeatedly. This could also occur on just a subset of nodes (e.g. dual core VPSs or Raspberri Pis).
By making the behaviour runtime configurable this PR allows us to choose the behaviour we want depending on circumstance. I suspect that long term we could make the timeout-free approach the default (#2381 moves in this direction) and just enable the timeouts on our testnet nodes for debugging purposes. This PR conservatively leaves the default as-is so we can gain some more experience before switching the default.
## 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>
## Issue Addressed
Closes#800Closes#1713
## Proposed Changes
Implement the temporary state storage algorithm described in #800. Specifically:
* Add `DBColumn::BeaconStateTemporary`, for storing 0-length temporary marker values.
* Store intermediate states immediately as they are created, marked temporary. Delete the temporary flag if the block is processed successfully.
* Add a garbage collection process to delete leftover temporary states on start-up.
* Bump the database schema version to 2 so that a DB with temporary states can't accidentally be used with older versions of the software. The auto-migration is a no-op, but puts in place some infra that we can use for future migrations (e.g. #1784)
## Additional Info
There are two known race conditions, one potentially causing permanent faults (hopefully rare), and the other insignificant.
### Race 1: Permanent state marked temporary
EDIT: this has been fixed by the addition of a lock around the relevant critical section
There are 2 threads that are trying to store 2 different blocks that share some intermediate states (e.g. they both skip some slots from the current head). Consider this sequence of events:
1. Thread 1 checks if state `s` already exists, and seeing that it doesn't, prepares an atomic commit of `(s, s_temporary_flag)`.
2. Thread 2 does the same, but also gets as far as committing the state txn, finishing the processing of its block, and _deleting_ the temporary flag.
3. Thread 1 is (finally) scheduled again, and marks `s` as temporary with its transaction.
4.
a) The process is killed, or thread 1's block fails verification and the temp flag is not deleted. This is a permanent failure! Any attempt to load state `s` will fail... hope it isn't on the main chain! Alternatively (4b) happens...
b) Thread 1 finishes, and re-deletes the temporary flag. In this case the failure is transient, state `s` will disappear temporarily, but will come back once thread 1 finishes running.
I _hope_ that steps 1-3 only happen very rarely, and 4a even more rarely. It's hard to know
This once again begs the question of why we're using LevelDB (#483), when it clearly doesn't care about atomicity! A ham-fisted fix would be to wrap the hot and cold DBs in locks, which would bring us closer to how other DBs handle read-write transactions. E.g. [LMDB only allows one R/W transaction at a time](https://docs.rs/lmdb/0.8.0/lmdb/struct.Environment.html#method.begin_rw_txn).
### Race 2: Temporary state returned from `get_state`
I don't think this race really matters, but in `load_hot_state`, if another thread stores a state between when we call `load_state_temporary_flag` and when we call `load_hot_state_summary`, then we could end up returning that state even though it's only a temporary state. I can't think of any case where this would be relevant, and I suspect if it did come up, it would be safe/recoverable (having data is safer than _not_ having data).
This could be fixed by using a LevelDB read snapshot, but that would require substantial changes to how we read all our values, so I don't think it's worth it right now.
## Issue Addressed
Solution 2 proposed here: https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/issues/1435#issuecomment-692317639
## Proposed Changes
- Adds an optional `--wss-checkpoint` flag that takes a string `root:epoch`
- Verify that the given checkpoint exists in the chain, or that the the chain syncs through this checkpoint. If not, shutdown and prompt the user to purge state before restarting.
## Additional Info
Co-authored-by: Paul Hauner <paul@paulhauner.com>
## Issue Addressed
NA
## Proposed Changes
Sets the default max skips to 700 so that it can cover the 693 slot skip from `80894 - 80201`.
## Additional Info
NA
## Proposed Changes
To mitigate the impact of minority forks on RAM and disk usage, this change rejects blocks whose parent lies more than 320 slots (10 epochs, ~1 hour) in the past. The behaviour is configurable via `lighthouse bn --max-skip-slots N`, and can be turned off entirely using `--max-skip-slots none`.
Co-authored-by: Paul Hauner <paul@paulhauner.com>
