Commit Graph

2 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Paul Hauner
be4e261e74 Use async code when interacting with EL (#3244)
## 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>
2022-07-03 05:36:50 +00:00
Paul Hauner
be11437c27 Batch BLS verification for attestations (#2399)
## Issue Addressed

NA

## Proposed Changes

Adds the ability to verify batches of aggregated/unaggregated attestations from the network.

When the `BeaconProcessor` finds there are messages in the aggregated or unaggregated attestation queues, it will first check the length of the queue:

- `== 1` verify the attestation individually.
- `>= 2` take up to 64 of those attestations and verify them in a batch.

Notably, we only perform batch verification if the queue has a backlog. We don't apply any artificial delays to attestations to try and force them into batches. 

### Batching Details

To assist with implementing batches we modify `beacon_chain::attestation_verification` to have two distinct categories for attestations:

- *Indexed* attestations: those which have passed initial validation and were valid enough for us to derive an `IndexedAttestation`.
- *Verified* attestations: those attestations which were indexed *and also* passed signature verification. These are well-formed, interesting messages which were signed by validators.

The batching functions accept `n` attestations and then return `n` attestation verification `Result`s, where those `Result`s can be any combination of `Ok` or `Err`. In other words, we attempt to verify as many attestations as possible and return specific per-attestation results so peer scores can be updated, if required.

When we batch verify attestations, we first try to map all those attestations to *indexed* attestations. If any of those attestations were able to be indexed, we then perform batch BLS verification on those indexed attestations. If the batch verification succeeds, we convert them into *verified* attestations, disabling individual signature checking. If the batch fails, we convert to verified attestations with individual signature checking enabled.

Ultimately, we optimistically try to do a batch verification of attestation signatures and fall-back to individual verification if it fails. This opens an attach vector for "poisoning" the attestations and causing us to waste a batch verification. I argue that peer scoring should do a good-enough job of defending against this and the typical-case gains massively outweigh the worst-case losses.

## Additional Info

Before this PR, attestation verification took the attestations by value (instead of by reference). It turns out that this was unnecessary and, in my opinion, resulted in some undesirable ergonomics (e.g., we had to pass the attestation back in the `Err` variant to avoid clones). In this PR I've modified attestation verification so that it now takes a reference.

I refactored the `beacon_chain/tests/attestation_verification.rs` tests so they use a builder-esque "tester" struct instead of a weird macro. It made it easier for me to test individual/batch with the same set of tests and I think it was a nice tidy-up. Notably, I did this last to try and make sure my new refactors to *actual* production code would pass under the existing test suite.
2021-09-22 08:49:41 +00:00