From 8bcab7be27199c3b405675c760320088a86ff63d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: yihuang <huang@crypto.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2021 21:01:44 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] docs: state revert logic (#421)
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Closes #356

Co-authored-by: Federico Kunze Küllmer <31522760+fedekunze@users.noreply.github.com>
---
 docs/core/state_snapshot.md | 59 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 59 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 docs/core/state_snapshot.md

diff --git a/docs/core/state_snapshot.md b/docs/core/state_snapshot.md
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+++ b/docs/core/state_snapshot.md
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# Snapshot and Revert in Ethermint
+
+EVM uses state-reverting exceptions to handle errors. Such an exception will undo all changes made to the state in the current call (and all its sub-calls), and the caller could handle the error and don't propagate. We need to implement the `Snapshot` and `RevertToSnapshot` apis in `StateDB` interfaces to support this feature.
+
+[go-ethereum implementation](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/blob/master/core/state/journal.go#L39) manages transient states in memory, and uses a list of journal logs to record all the state modification operations done so far, snapshot is an index in the log list, and to revert to a snapshot it just undo the journal logs after the snapshot index in reversed order.
+
+Ethermint uses cosmos-sdk's storage api to manage states, fortunately the storage api supports creating cached overlays, it works like this:
+
+```golang
+// create a cached overlay storage on top of ctx storage.
+overlayCtx, commit := ctx.CacheContext()
+// Modify states using the overlayed storage
+err := doCall(overlayCtx)
+if err != nil {
+  return err
+}
+// commit will write the dirty states into the underlying storage
+commit()
+
+// Now, just drop the overlayCtx and keep using ctx
+```
+
+And it can be used in a nested way, like this:
+
+```golang
+overlayCtx1, commit1 := ctx.CacheContext()
+doCall1(overlayCtx1)
+{
+    overlayCtx2, commit2 := overlayCtx1.CacheContext()
+    doCall2(overlayCtx2)
+    commit2()
+}
+commit1()
+```
+
+With this feature, we can use a stake of overlayed contexts to implement nested `Snapshot` and `RevertToSnapshot` calls.
+
+```golang
+type cachedContext struct {
+	ctx    sdk.Context
+	commit func()
+}
+var contextStack []cachedContext
+func Snapshot() int {
+  ctx, commit := contextStack.Top().CacheContext()
+  contextStack.Push(cachedContext{ctx, commit})
+  return len(contextStack) - 1
+}
+func RevertToSnapshot(int snapshot) {
+  contextStack = contextStack[:snapshot]
+}
+func Commit() {
+  for i := len(contextStack) - 1; i >= 0; i-- {
+    contextStack[i].commit()
+  }
+  contextStack = {}
+}
+```
+