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@holgerd77 holgerd77 released this 17 Jul 15:17
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@ethereumjs/blockchain@7.0.0-rc.1
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This is the release candidate (RC1) for the upcoming breaking releases on the various EthereumJS libraries. The associated release notes below are the main source of information on the changeset, also for the upcoming final releases, where we'll just provide change addition summaries + references to these RC1 notes.

At time of the RC1 releases there is/was no plan for a second RC round and breaking releases following relatively shorty (2-3 weeks) after the RC1 round. Things may change though depending on the feedback we'll receive.

Introduction

This round of breaking releases brings the EthereumJS libraries to the browser. Finally! 🤩

While you could use our libraries in the browser libraries before, there had been caveats.

WE HAVE ELIMINATED ALL OF THEM.

The largest two undertakings: First: we have rewritten all (half) of our API and elimited the usage of Node.js specific Buffer all over the place and have rewritten with using Uint8Array byte objects. Second: we went throuh our whole stack, rewrote imports and exports, replaced and updated dependencies all over and are now able to provide a hybrid CommonJS/ESM build, for all libraries. Both of these things are huge.

Together with some few other modifications this now allows to run each (maybe adding an asterisk for client and devp2p) of our libraries directly in the browser - more or less without any modifications - see the examples/browser.html file in each package folder for an easy to set up example.

This is generally a big thing for Ethereum cause this brings the full Ethereum Execution Layer (EL) protocol stack to the browser in an easy accessible way for developers, for the first time ever! 🎉

This will allow for easy-to-setup browser applications both around the existing as well as the upcoming Ethereum EL protocol stack in the future. 🏄🏾‍♂️ We are beyond excitement to see what you guys will be building with this for "Browser-Ethereum". 🤓

Browser is not the only thing though why this release round is exciting: default Shanghai hardfork, full Cancun support, significantly smaller bundle sizes for various libraries, new database abstractions, a simpler to use EVM, API clean-ups throughout the whole stack. These are just the most prominent additional things here to mention which will make the developer heart beat a bit faster hopefully when you are scanning to the vast release notes for every of the 15 (!) releases! 🧑🏽‍💻

So: jump right in and enjoy. We can't wait to hear your feedback and see if you agree that these releases are as good as we think they are. 🙂 ❤️

The EthereumJS Team

Default Shanghai HF / Merge -> Paris Renaming / Full Cancun Hardfork Support

The Shanghai hardfork is now the default HF in @ethereumjs/common and therefore for all libraries who use a Common-based HF setting internally (e.g. Tx, Block or EVM), see PR #2655.

Also the Merge HF has been renamed to Paris (Hardfork.Paris) which is the correct HF name on the execution side, see #2652. To set the HF to Paris in Common you can do:

import { Chain, Common, Hardfork } from '@ethereumjs/common'
const common = new Common({ chain: Chain.Mainnet, hardfork: Hardfork.Paris })

And third on hardforks 🙂: the upcoming Cancun hardfork is now fully supported and all EIPs are included (see PRs #2659 and #2892). The Cancun HF can be activated with:

import { Chain, Common, Hardfork } from '@ethereumjs/common'
const common = new Common({ chain: Chain.Mainnet, hardfork: Hardfork.Cancun })

Note that not all Cancun EIPs are in a FINAL EIP state though and particularly EIP-4844 will likely still receive some changes.

Database Abstraction / Removed LevelDB Dependency

Up to this release the backend store for the blockchain library was tied to be a LevelDB database, which was unfortunate since level is a dependency which doesn't play so well in the browser and beyond there are many use cases for this library where a persistent data store is just not needed.

With this release the database therefore gets an additional abstraction layer which allows to switch the backend to whatever is fitting the best for a use case, see PR #2669 and PR #2673. The database just needs to conform to the new DB interface which we provide in the @ethereumjs/util package (since this is used in other places as well).

By default the blockchain package is now using a MapDB non-persistent data storage which is also generically provided in the @ethereumjs/util package.

If you need a persistent data store for your use case you can consider using the wrapper we have written within our client library.

Blockchain/VM: Removed genesis Dependency

Genesis state was huge and had previously been bundled with the Blockchain package with the burden going over to the VM, since Blockchain is a dependency.

With this release genesis state has been removed from blockchain and moved into its own auxiliary package @ethereumjs/genesis, from which it can be included if needed (for most - especially VM - use cases it is not necessary), see PR #2844.

This goes along with some changes in Blockchain and VM API:

  • Blockchain: There is a new constructor option genesisStateRoot beside genesisBlock and genesisState for an alternative condensed way to provide the genesis state root directly
  • Blockchain: genesisState(): GenesisState method has been replaced by the async getGenesisStateRoot(chainId: Chain): Promise<Uint8Array> method
  • VM: activateGenesisState?: boolean constructor option has been replaced with a genesisState?: GenesisState option

Hybrid CJS/ESM Build

We now provide both a CommonJS and an ESM build for all our libraries. 🥳 This transition was a huge undertaking and should make the usage of our libraries in the browser a lot more straight-forward, see PR #2685, #2783, #2786, #2764, #2804 and #2809 (and others). We rewrote the whole set of imports and exports within the libraries, updated or completely removed a lot of dependencies along the way and removed the usage of all native Node.js primitives (like https or util).

There are now two different build directories in our dist folder, being dist/cjs for the CommonJS and dist/esm for the ESM build. That means that direct imports (which you generally should try to avoid, rather open an issue on your import needs), need an update within your code (do a dist or the like code search).

Both builds have respective separate entrypoints in the distributed package.json file.

A CommonJS import of our libraries can then be done like this:

const { Chain, Common } = require('@ethereumjs/common')
const common = new Common({ chain: Chain.Mainnet })

And this is how an ESM import looks like:

import { Chain, Common } from '@ethereumjs/common'
const common = new Common({ chain: Chain.Mainnet })

Using ESM will give you additional advantages over CJS beyond browser usage like static code analysis / Tree Shaking which CJS can not provide.

Side note: along this transition we also rewrote our whole test suite (yes!!!) to now work with Vitest instead of Tape.

Buffer -> Uint8Array

With these releases we remove all Node.js specific Buffer usages from our libraries and replace these with Uint8Array representations, which are available both in Node.js and the browser (Buffer is a subclass of Uint8Array). While this is a big step towards interoperability and browser compatibility of our libraries, this is also one of the most invasive operations we have ever done, see the huge changeset from PR #2566 and #2607. 😋

We nevertheless think this is very much worth it and we tried to make transition work as easy as possible.

How to upgrade?

For this library you should check if you use one of the following constructors, methods, constants or types and do a search and update input and/or output values or general usages and add conversion methods if necessary:

// blockchain (BlockchainInterface)
Blockchain.create(opts: BlockchainOptions = {}) // db
Blockchain.getBlock(blockId: Uint8Array | number | bigint): Promise<Block>
Blockchain.getTotalDifficulty(hash: Uint8Array, number?: bigint): Promise<bigint>
Blockchain.getBlocks()
Blockchain.selectNeededHashes()
Blockchain.delBlock(blockHash: Uint8Array)
Blockchain.setIteratorHead(tag: string, headHash: Uint8Array)
Blockchain.safeNumberToHash(number: bigint): Promise<Uint8Array | false>
Blockchain.createGenesisBlock(stateRoot: Uint8Array): Block

We have converted existing Buffer conversion methods to Uint8Array conversion methods in the @ethereumjs/util bytes module, see the respective README section for guidance.

Prefixed Hex Strings as Default

The mixed usage of prefixed and unprefixed hex strings is a constant source of errors in byte-handling code bases.

We have therefore decided to go "prefixed" by default, see PR #2830 and #2845.

The hexToBytes and bytesToHex methods, also similar methods like intToHex, now take 0x-prefixed hex strings as input and output prefixed strings. The corresponding unprefixed methods are marked as deprecated and usage should be avoided.

Please therefore check you code base on updating and ensure that values you are passing to constructors and methods are prefixed with a 0x.

Other Changes

  • Support for Node.js 16 has been removed (minimal version: Node.js 18), PR #2859
  • Remove deprecated getHead() method, PR #2706
  • Breaking: The copy() method has been renamed to shallowCopy() (same underlying state DB), PR #2826
  • Breaking: Blockchain._common property has been renamed to Blockchain.common, PR #2857
  • Fixed clique signer reorg scenario, PR #2610
  • Fix handling of nested uint8Arrays in JSON in DB, PR #2666
  • Save iterator head to last successfuly executed even on errors, PR #2680
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