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Historical batches #2649

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
Jan 3, 2023
Merged

Historical batches #2649

merged 2 commits into from
Jan 3, 2023

Commits on Oct 27, 2022

  1. Historical batches 

    This PR, a continuation of
replaces `historical_roots` with
`historical_block_roots`.

By keeping an accumulator of historical block roots in the state, it
becomes possible to validate the entire block history that led up to
that particular state without executing the transitions, and without
checking them one by one in backwards order using a parent chain.

This is interesting for archival purposes as well as when implementing
sync protocols that can verify chunks of blocks quickly, meaning they
can be downloaded in any order.

It's also useful as it provides a canonical hash by which such chunks of
blocks can be named, with a direct reference in the state.

In this PR, `historical_roots` is frozen at its current value and
`historical_batches` are computed from the merge epoch onwards.

After this PR, `block_batch_root` in the state can be used to verify an
era of blocks against the state with a simple root check.

The `historical_roots` values on the other hand can be used to verify
that a constant distributed with clients is valid for a particular
state, and therefore extends the block validation all the way back to
genesis without backfilling `block_batch_root` and without introducing
any new security assumptions in the client.

As far as naming goes, it's convenient to talk about an "era" being 8192
slots ~= 1.14 days. The 8192 number comes from the
SLOTS_PER_HISTORICAL_ROOT constant.

With multiple easily verifable blocks in a file, it becomes trivial to
offload block history to out-of-protocol transfer methods (bittorrent /
ftp / whatever) - including execution payloads, paving the way for a
future in which clients purge block history in p2p.

This PR can be applied along with the merge which simplifies payload
distribution from the get-go. Both execution and consensus clients
benefit because from the merge onwards, they both need to be able to
supply ranges of blocks in the sync protocol from what effectively is
"cold storage".

Another possibility is to include it in a future cleanup PR - this
complicates the "cold storage" mode above by not covering exection
payloads from start.
    @arnetheduck
    arnetheduck committed Oct 27, 2022
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  2. move field last 

    avoids changing "header" fields in state
    @arnetheduck
    arnetheduck committed Oct 27, 2022
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