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go-ethereum-modded-tocallarg/consensus/consensus.go
Péter Szilágyi 39638c81c5
all: nuke total difficulty (#30744)
The total difficulty is the sum of all block difficulties from genesis
to a certain block. This value was used in PoW for deciding which chain
is heavier, and thus which chain to select. Since PoS has a different
fork selection algorithm, all blocks since the merge have a difficulty
of 0, and all total difficulties are the same for the past 2 years.

Whilst the TDs are mostly useless nowadays, there was never really a
reason to mess around removing them since they are so tiny. This
reasoning changes when we go down the path of pruned chain history. In
order to reconstruct any TD, we **must** retrieve all the headers from
chain head to genesis and then iterate all the difficulties to compute
the TD.

In a world where we completely prune past chain segments (bodies,
receipts, headers), it is not possible to reconstruct the TD at all. In
a world where we still keep chain headers and prune only the rest,
reconstructing it possible as long as we process (or download) the chain
forward from genesis, but trying to snap sync the head first and
backfill later hits the same issue, the TD becomes impossible to
calculate until genesis is backfilled.

All in all, the TD is a messy out-of-state, out-of-consensus computed
field that is overall useless nowadays, but code relying on it forces
the client into certain modes of operation and prevents other modes or
other optimizations. This PR completely nukes out the TD from the node.
It doesn't compute it, it doesn't operate on it, it's as if it didn't
even exist.

Caveats:

- Whenever we have APIs that return TD (devp2p handshake, tracer, etc.)
we return a TD of 0.
- For era files, we recompute the TD during export time (fairly quick)
to retain the format content.
- It is not possible to "verify" the merge point (i.e. with TD gone, TTD
is useless). Since we're not verifying PoW any more, just blindly trust
it, not verifying but blindly trusting the many year old merge point
seems just the same trust model.
- Our tests still need to be able to generate pre and post merge blocks,
so they need a new way to split the merge without TTD. The PR introduces
a settable ttdBlock field on the consensus object which is used by tests
as the block where originally the TTD happened. This is not needed for
live nodes, we never want to generate old blocks.
- One merge transition consensus test was disabled. With a
non-operational TD, testing how the client reacts to TTD is useless, it
cannot react.

Questions:

- Should we also drop total terminal difficulty from the genesis json?
It's a number we cannot react on any more, so maybe it would be cleaner
to get rid of even more concepts.

---------

Co-authored-by: Gary Rong <garyrong0905@gmail.com>
2025-01-28 18:55:41 +01:00

117 lines
5.1 KiB
Go

// Copyright 2017 The go-ethereum Authors
// This file is part of the go-ethereum library.
//
// The go-ethereum library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// The go-ethereum library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
// GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
// along with the go-ethereum library. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
// Package consensus implements different Ethereum consensus engines.
package consensus
import (
"math/big"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/common"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/core/state"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/core/types"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/core/vm"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/params"
"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/rpc"
)
// ChainHeaderReader defines a small collection of methods needed to access the local
// blockchain during header verification.
type ChainHeaderReader interface {
// Config retrieves the blockchain's chain configuration.
Config() *params.ChainConfig
// CurrentHeader retrieves the current header from the local chain.
CurrentHeader() *types.Header
// GetHeader retrieves a block header from the database by hash and number.
GetHeader(hash common.Hash, number uint64) *types.Header
// GetHeaderByNumber retrieves a block header from the database by number.
GetHeaderByNumber(number uint64) *types.Header
// GetHeaderByHash retrieves a block header from the database by its hash.
GetHeaderByHash(hash common.Hash) *types.Header
}
// ChainReader defines a small collection of methods needed to access the local
// blockchain during header and/or uncle verification.
type ChainReader interface {
ChainHeaderReader
// GetBlock retrieves a block from the database by hash and number.
GetBlock(hash common.Hash, number uint64) *types.Block
}
// Engine is an algorithm agnostic consensus engine.
type Engine interface {
// Author retrieves the Ethereum address of the account that minted the given
// block, which may be different from the header's coinbase if a consensus
// engine is based on signatures.
Author(header *types.Header) (common.Address, error)
// VerifyHeader checks whether a header conforms to the consensus rules of a
// given engine.
VerifyHeader(chain ChainHeaderReader, header *types.Header) error
// VerifyHeaders is similar to VerifyHeader, but verifies a batch of headers
// concurrently. The method returns a quit channel to abort the operations and
// a results channel to retrieve the async verifications (the order is that of
// the input slice).
VerifyHeaders(chain ChainHeaderReader, headers []*types.Header) (chan<- struct{}, <-chan error)
// VerifyUncles verifies that the given block's uncles conform to the consensus
// rules of a given engine.
VerifyUncles(chain ChainReader, block *types.Block) error
// Prepare initializes the consensus fields of a block header according to the
// rules of a particular engine. The changes are executed inline.
Prepare(chain ChainHeaderReader, header *types.Header) error
// Finalize runs any post-transaction state modifications (e.g. block rewards
// or process withdrawals) but does not assemble the block.
//
// Note: The state database might be updated to reflect any consensus rules
// that happen at finalization (e.g. block rewards).
Finalize(chain ChainHeaderReader, header *types.Header, state vm.StateDB, body *types.Body)
// FinalizeAndAssemble runs any post-transaction state modifications (e.g. block
// rewards or process withdrawals) and assembles the final block.
//
// Note: The block header and state database might be updated to reflect any
// consensus rules that happen at finalization (e.g. block rewards).
FinalizeAndAssemble(chain ChainHeaderReader, header *types.Header, state *state.StateDB, body *types.Body, receipts []*types.Receipt) (*types.Block, error)
// Seal generates a new sealing request for the given input block and pushes
// the result into the given channel.
//
// Note, the method returns immediately and will send the result async. More
// than one result may also be returned depending on the consensus algorithm.
Seal(chain ChainHeaderReader, block *types.Block, results chan<- *types.Block, stop <-chan struct{}) error
// SealHash returns the hash of a block prior to it being sealed.
SealHash(header *types.Header) common.Hash
// CalcDifficulty is the difficulty adjustment algorithm. It returns the difficulty
// that a new block should have.
CalcDifficulty(chain ChainHeaderReader, time uint64, parent *types.Header) *big.Int
// APIs returns the RPC APIs this consensus engine provides.
APIs(chain ChainHeaderReader) []rpc.API
// Close terminates any background threads maintained by the consensus engine.
Close() error
}