Add early attester cache (#2872)

## Issue Addressed

NA

## Proposed Changes

Introduces a cache to attestation to produce atop blocks which will become the head, but are not fully imported (e.g., not inserted into the database).

Whilst attesting to a block before it's imported is rather easy, if we're going to produce that attestation then we also need to be able to:

1. Verify that attestation.
1. Respond to RPC requests for the `beacon_block_root`.

Attestation verification (1) is *partially* covered. Since we prime the shuffling cache before we insert the block into the early attester cache, we should be fine for all typical use-cases. However, it is possible that the cache is washed out before we've managed to insert the state into the database and then attestation verification will fail with a "missing beacon state"-type error.

Providing the block via RPC (2) is also partially covered, since we'll check the database *and* the early attester cache when responding a blocks-by-root request. However, we'll still omit the block from blocks-by-range requests (until the block lands in the DB). I *think* this is fine, since there's no guarantee that we return all blocks for those responses.

Another important consideration is whether or not the *parent* of the early attester block is available in the databse. If it were not, we might fail to respond to blocks-by-root request that are iterating backwards to collect a chain of blocks. I argue that *we will always have the parent of the early attester block in the database.* This is because we are holding the fork-choice write-lock when inserting the block into the early attester cache and we do not drop that until the block is in the database.
This commit is contained in:
Paul Hauner
2022-01-11 01:35:55 +00:00
parent 65b1374b58
commit 02e2fd2fb8
9 changed files with 304 additions and 10 deletions

View File

@@ -122,6 +122,24 @@ fn produces_attestations() {
);
assert_eq!(data.target.epoch, state.current_epoch(), "bad target epoch");
assert_eq!(data.target.root, target_root, "bad target root");
let early_attestation = {
let proto_block = chain.fork_choice.read().get_block(&block_root).unwrap();
chain
.early_attester_cache
.add_head_block(block_root, block.clone(), proto_block, &state, &chain.spec)
.unwrap();
chain
.early_attester_cache
.try_attest(slot, index, &chain.spec)
.unwrap()
.unwrap()
};
assert_eq!(
attestation, early_attestation,
"early attester cache inconsistent"
);
}
}
}