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Sassafras Protocol #41

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26 of 32 tasks
davxy opened this issue May 24, 2022 · 3 comments · May be fixed by paritytech/substrate#11879 or #1336
Open
26 of 32 tasks

Sassafras Protocol #41

davxy opened this issue May 24, 2022 · 3 comments · May be fixed by paritytech/substrate#11879 or #1336
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@davxy
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davxy commented May 24, 2022

The Vision

This issue tracks the implementation progress of the Sassafras block authoring protocol.

The protocol itself is currently considered experimental and the official whitepaper is still a work-in-progress.
Nevertheless the changes that we expect from the protocol are limited and we already have enough elements to start building a working prototype.

Available resources:

The Plan

The overall work is divided into smaller and self-contained steps that incrementally should bring us to a sound implementation.

Identified sub-tasks:

  • Prototype 1: first minimal implementation.
  • Prototype 2: improved implementation.
  • Prototype 3: Ring-VRF integration: replace Schnorrkel-VRF with Ring-VRF for slot tickets generation and validation
  • Prototype 4: Tickets Proxy: (almost) anonymous ticket submission via a proxy validator.

Version 0.1 - KISS

Regardless of the simplification compromises, the protocol core logic should work as close as possible to the one described by the paper.

  • Prototype binary derived from the node-template for simplicity. No fancy pallets only stuff strictly necessary to have something "that works".
  • Identify and implement the very basic components of the Sassafras protocol (for FRAME, primitives and client).
  • Fixed validators set.
  • Block randomness accumulator for next epoch randomness seed.
  • Tickets generation initially performed via Schnorrkel VRF (instead of Ring VRF). Use the same key used to produce block randomness.
  • On-chain publication directly by the author (no proxy) via unsigned extrinsics (best practice?)
  • (On epoch change) Tickets are sorted:
    - First lexicographic sort
    - If num-tickets > num-slots then drop extra tickets
    - Finally assign tickets to slots using outside-in strategy .
  • If num-tickets < num-slots then AURA fallback for empty slots.
    - This will address the genesis warm-up phase as well.
  • Block verification for primary and secondary method

Version 0.2 - Improve, test and refactor

  • Improved tickets management strategy (double buffering).
  • Validators and configuration change.
  • Session pallet integration.
  • Aux data revert.
  • Report equivocations.
  • Skipped epochs handling.
  • Testing for pallet and native components.

Version 0.3 - Ring-VRF Integration

  • Warp sync support
  • Structured ticket (as discussed during the Sardinia Retreat)
  • Fix Slot VRF output
  • Integrate Ring VRF.
  • Better define the parameters used to compute the threshold and the formula itself
  • Pallet extrinsics benchmarks (especially ring ctx loading, ring verifier key generation and ticket verification).

Version 0.4

  • RFC proposal
  • Zombienet tests and missing unit tests
  • Proper equivocation reporting system
  • ...

Version 0.5 - Tickets Proxy


Here you can find the board with specific sub-tasks to this milestone:
https://github.com/orgs/paritytech/projects/18/views/15

@burdges
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burdges commented Jun 28, 2022

  1. Avoid xxhash here. It'll definitely have collisions. Ain't clear how one exploits them, but we do not care about the performance of one blake2 of 512 bits per block.

  2. Yes, the sort is an off chain operation of on-chain data, so it'll be deterministic anyways. I doubt this maters much but whatever.

  3. I'm not sure if I understand, but yes each block reveals a fresh VRF not seen before, and not the same as the ring VRF output.

  4. No, we're doing sassafras mostly to remove the forks of the secondary claim strategy from babe. we do however pad the "inside" of the sorted list of tickets using some round robin like scheme.

@rphmeier
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Another additional consideration is higher-level code that uses the BABE per-block VRFs such as https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot/blob/master/node/primitives/src/approval.rs#L146 . Any hard fork needs to be coordinated (ideally using Runtime API presence/versioning) to ensure a seamless handover for such code.

@burdges
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burdges commented Oct 18, 2022

We'll want the Sassafras per-block VRF in approvals I think, not the current randomness accumulator value. An adversary would know the randomness accumulator before making their attack, so it gives no benefits and permits more bias. It's beneficial when the adversary waits somewhat longer, but not a full epoch.

@kamilsa kamilsa mentioned this issue May 3, 2023
3 tasks
@the-right-joyce the-right-joyce transferred this issue from paritytech/substrate Aug 24, 2023
This was referenced Aug 29, 2023
@davxy davxy mentioned this issue Dec 1, 2023
3 tasks
lexnv pushed a commit that referenced this issue Apr 3, 2024
Remove `authoringVersion` from runtime spec
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 8, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 8, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 9, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 10, 2024
serban300 pushed a commit to serban300/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 10, 2024
jonathanudd pushed a commit to jonathanudd/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Apr 10, 2024
paritytech-rfc-bot bot pushed a commit to polkadot-fellows/RFCs that referenced this issue Jun 25, 2024
This RFC outlines the core components and procedures of Sassafras
consensus protocol.

---

This RFC does not cover the following topics:

- Implementation details necessary for interoperability: structure of
the on-chain storage, host functions and runtime API.
- Deployment strategies, especially in the context of already existing
blockchain networks
- Parameters required for the zk-SNARK (SRS).
- Networking protocol to deliver tickets to relayers.

These (and probably other) topics are fairly complex and somewhat
independent of the core protocol. They should be the subject of
separate, dedicated RFCs for proper exploration and discussion.

---


[Rendered](https://github.com/davxy/polkadot-fellows-rfcs/blob/sassafras-consensus-rfc/text/0026-sassafras-consensus.md)

Reference implementation tracking issue:
paritytech/polkadot-sdk#41
liuchengxu added a commit to subcoin-project/polkadot-sdk that referenced this issue Sep 20, 2024
* Add import_params to blockchain cmd

* Nits

* Minor optimization: avoid cloning the entire address list

* Mark disconnected in addressbook

* Add --verbose to blockchain cmd

* Nit

* Fix clippy

* Docs improvement

* .
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