Weekly update 2021-02-05

[artob]

Weekly update 2021-02-05

The weekly update on the forum is at:
https://gov.near.org/t/2021-02-05-evm-update/576

The recording is available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePoGHTetbuA&list=PL9tzQn_TEuFV2O7twBM-41lCDq5nr8nLm

Summary

• This week, we recorded two short EVM tutorial videos, recruited more developers, and took significant architectural decisions that will enable us to iterate faster and deliver the EVM sooner.
• Next week, we are planning to begin implementing nETH as the base token, begin developing a new benchmarking tool, and continue work on the architectural changes and EVM upgrade begun this week.

Agenda

• Current goal
• This week
• Discussion
  • Transaction replayer
  • EVM architecture
• Next week

Current goal

• TestNet release by the end of Q1.
• Protocol upgrade and bug bounty prep ongoing.

This week

Alex

• Worked on defining and deciding the EVM architecture.
• Prepared and recorded an All-Hands presentation.

Arto

• Worked on defining and deciding the EVM architecture.
• Prepared and recorded an All-Hands presentation.
• Worked on evaluating the SputnikVM implementation.
• Began working on changing nearcore to SputnikVM.
• Worked on project management ticket triage and tasking.

Evgeny

• Reviewed the SputnikVM code base for quality/usability.
• Reviewed the near-evm implementation.
• Investigated the NEP-141 & NEP-21 standards.

Frank

• Submitted CryptoZombies benchmark pull request (#3866).
• Researched the replayer implementation and prior art.
• Screened new team member candidates.
• Read the All-Hands presentation materials.

Illia

• Implemented and benchmarked different architectural options for EVM.
• Updated near/near-evm to use SputnikVM, cutting down the contract size.
• Making the Balancer tests pass, about 70% complete.

Mike

• Recorded two new tutorial videos for EVM: 1, 2.
• Fixed BetaNet with help from the Wallet team: creating accounts and logging in now works again.

Discussion

Transaction replayer

• Didn't find any useful existing tooling for our needs.
• To replay transactions, have to be able to set the chain ID.
• Read the data from a local node's on-disk storage, too slow from RPC.
• Write to nearcore through the RPC proxy.

EVM architecture

• Performance-critical functions that must be exported from nearcore: Keccak, ECRecover, SHA-256, RIPEMD-160, BN.
• Bytecode interpreter inner loop should be pushed down.
• Contract runtime will be able to help out on reducing the slowdown multiplier due to the hybrid approach.
• Next approach to try: whitelist EVM, use LLVM compiler. Missing implementation of Wasmer for LLVM. Not far away.
• Next step: create benchmark for Contract Runtime team.
• Alex: Need to keep in mind gas limits: with the current EVM precompile, 9x higher than Eth1.
• Illia:
  • 1st: Deploy the pure-contract version as an (explicit) alpha to all chains, start using it.
  • 2nd: Improve the performance of the contract, recover almost all of the performance compared to the precompile. (LLVM 5x.)
  • 3rd: Define the U256 stack machine interface, push down implementation into nearcore.

Next week

• Alex: Continuing work on the protocol upgrade proposal. Bridge.
• Arto: Joining the Contract Runtime team meetings. Continuing on SputnikVM. Adding ECRecover and RIPEMD-160 to the Math API. Fixing the README and updating onboarding for the EVM-as-a-contract approach.
• Evgeny: Beginning on the implementation of NEP-21/141 for nETH in the EVM contract. (Sync with Eugene, Mike, Illia.)
• Frank: Beginning on the transaction replayer implementation.
• Illia: Finalizing EVM-as-a-contract, aiming to pass the Balancer tests.
• Mike: Recording a Pet Shop video for ETHDenver.