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

@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ impl<T: BeaconChainTypes> Worker<T> {
) {
let mut send_block_count = 0;
for root in request.block_roots.iter() {
if let Ok(Some(block)) = self.chain.store.get_block(root) {
if let Ok(Some(block)) = self.chain.get_block_checking_early_attester_cache(root) {
self.send_response(
peer_id,
Response::BlocksByRoot(Some(Box::new(block))),