Root Account File Updater / Trimmer

[buckyroberts]

New (updated) logic

For this task we are creating an updated Root Account File. The purpose of this is to provide more frequent on-disk backups of account information and allow for faster syncing for new validators coming onto the network.

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sZY48ks8geUrFC1-jUxB7DFKSMlIa8dPwkr4TXp1jo4/edit?usp=sharing
• Trimmer.pdf

Documentation:

• https://thenewboston.com/guide/root-account-file

Old (original) logic

This is older logic from the previous GitHub issue. I wanted to leave it in here as reference though since it does a good job of explaining the problem we are solving.

Basic steps:

1. Read the HEAD_BLOCK_HASH into memory (this will mark where to stop)
2. Read in all account data from the SelfConfig.root_account_file
3. Starting with the first block in the blockchain (find using get_initial_block_identifier()) apply the updated_balances changes to the new temporary root account file
4. Continue along the blockchain until reaching the stored HEAD_BLOCK_HASH (end of the blockchain)
5. Once the new root account file has been generated, update the following SelfConfiguration fields root_account_file, root_account_file_hash, and seed_block_identifier

Notes:

• This will be a periodic task scheduled using celery beat - it will run every hour
• We can't simply make a backup from the Account table due to performance issues/race conditions

For reference:

• https://thenewboston.com/guide/confirmation-validators