This Month in Forest - January 2025

[LesnyRumcajs]

This Month in Forest 🌲

Welcome to the January edition of This Month in Forest! After a short winter break, we are excited to share the latest updates and improvements to the Forest Filecoin client (and more!) with you. ❄️

Highlights

Forest Faucet Released 💧

After a few iterations, the Forest Faucet is finally released. It even drips mainnet FIL! 💧 You can check it out here. The main characteristics include the following:

• Serverless: There is no need to worry about the server going down; you can also deploy it yourself with a free Cloudflare account.
• Open-source: You can check out the code here and contribute!
• Built with Rust 🦀 , it's fast, reliable, and approved by the Rustaceans. Check out Leptos, the framework we used to build the faucet.
• In-built rate limiting - to prevent abuse and ensure everyone gets a fair share of FIL for tinkering needs.
• Calibnet and Mainnet support - you can get FIL for both networks.
• UI - created by world-class designers (grizzled backend engineers that can barely use stylesheets). Yes, websites in the early 90s were our inspiration. 🎨

Use the faucet, and let us know what you think! 🛠️ We'd love to hear your feedback.

RetroPGF Round 2 Results 🏅

RetroPGF round 2 results are out. We are happy to announce that Forest has been selected as one of the projects to receive additional funding. 💰 We are excited to continue working to provide great tools and services for the Filecoin ecosystem.

Development

RPC snapshot testing ☑️

prayer n. A low-cost method of data verification, the efficiency of which depends on the intensity, sincerity, and accuracy of the supplicant and on the mood of the Beseeched.
The Computer Contradictionary, Stan Kelly-Bootle

We came up with a new way to test the RPC methods. We now use snapshot testing to ensure the RPC methods return the expected data; this will help to improve the correctness and coverage of the RPC methods. ♾️

For the curious ones, the process of creating an RPC snapshot test is as follows:

• Run the RPC method with the desired parameters; assert that the result is identical in Forest and Lotus.
• Create a minimal CAR file with the data needed for this particular RPC. This is done by executing the method, marking the touched entries and exporting them to a CAR file.
• Put together the request, data and response in a JSON file. It's a classical given-when-then approach.
• Upload the bundle and add an entry in the test suite.

This sounds complicated, but it's pretty simple and effective. 🤓 These RPC regression bundles could be used by any Filecoin client, not just Forest.

Documentation 📚

documentation n. [Latin docomentum "warning"] 1 The promised literature that fails to arrive with the supporting hardware. 2 A single, illegible, photocopied page of proprietary caveats and suggested infractions. 3 The detailed, unindexed description of a superseded package.
The Computer Contradictionary, Stan Kelly-Bootle

Forest documentation is now part of the Forest repository and available at https://docs.forest.chainsafe.io/. We are working hard to make it as comprehensive and useful as possible. Interested in all the knobs and levers of the Forest client? Check out the CLI documentation here. Updated daily with the latest changes (by bots because we are lazy), it's the best place to learn how to use Forest. 🌲

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let us know! 📝

RPC improvements and fixes 🛠️

We have been working on improving the RPC methods and fixing some bugs. The most notable additions are:

• Filecoin.EthTraceBlock,
• Filecoin.EthGetTransactionByBlockNumberAndIndex,
• Filecoin.StateMinerInitialPledgeForSector.

And the most notable fixes are:

• Filecoin.EthGetBlockReceipts (incorrect data deserialize),
• Filecoin.EthGetBlockReceiptsLimited (incorrect prototype).

RPC 2025 Q1 plans 🔮

We have started planning the RPC improvements for the first quarter of 2025. The main focus will be ensuring that the most relevant RPC methods are implemented and working correctly. We will also work on benchmarking them to ensure they are fast and reliable (and we can brag about it). 📈

Other

As always, see the CHANGELOG for details. Note that it contains primarily client-facing changes, so if you're interested in the nitty-gritty details, you'll need to go through the commit history. 🤓

[rvagg]

These RPC regression bundles could be used by any Filecoin client

Yes please! If you're bundling these, then I'd love to take a look at how we could consume and use them in Lotus too.

[LesnyRumcajs]

@rvagg A sample bundle looks like this:

{
  "chain": {
    "type": "calibnet"
  },
  "name": "Filecoin.StateMinerSectors",
  "params": [
    "f0143103",
    null,
    [
      {
        "/": "bafy2bzacedzb5koycjekotwimukblfok3zdemow3g26l6h7nv5t6pohvtplzi"
      },
      {
        "/": "bafy2bzaceaupmlsjf33meoxcc7gnbzxccjhrgbydkqocveomaspjzvnk5nuya"
      },
      {
        "/": "bafy2bzacecerzyglqmz6rjof6zvq3hgttbefgmtwoyvldkkm7tvwcvpaqzc32"
      }
    ]
  ],
  "response": {
    "Ok": [
      {
        "Activation": 2045064,
        "DealIDs": null,
        "DealWeight": "0",
        "ExpectedDayReward": "14895922754395072669",
        "ExpectedStoragePledge": "246876765891429563714",
        "Expiration": 5723358,
        "Flags": 1,
        "InitialPledge": "9999999843067494400",
        "PowerBaseEpoch": 2056137,
        "ReplacedDayReward": "1602084964694701887",
        "SealProof": 8,
        "SealedCID": {
          "/": "bagboea4b5abcbmbdheuntwxfnvusj5luubgsvnkjggrr23fmqmhwi2gz26m2p5r5"
        },
        "SectorKeyCID": {
          "/": "bagboea4b5abcaarnzug3aen5lnd46h4o5gbzhwyuqkcmrlwd6s5ffsnou6uoknah"
        },
        "SectorNumber": 0,
        "VerifiedDealWeight": "126004754097635328"
      }
      ...
    ]
  },
  "db": "<contents>"
}

Additionally, we have some Forest-centric docs here, but we'd be more than happy to make it work across the board!