persistence

Pocket Network 1.0 Persistence Module Specification: Tamper Proof Hybrid Mutable Database Persistence Model

@luyzdeleon - Luis Correa de León @olshansk - Daniel Olshansky Version 1.0.3 - July 2022

Abstract

This document presents a specification for the Persistence Module of Pocket Network 1.0, which aims to tackle the persistence needs of Pocket Network 1.0 nodes: scalability, robustness, data integrity and security. This specification is composed of 3 pillars:

  1. A Client-Server Architecture separating middleware processes from a generic database engine where the persistent data lives.

  2. A Persistence Client Middleware Specification dictating how clients of the generic database engine behave to persist, update and query the datasets necessary for participating as Pocket Network actors.

  3. A Blockchain State Validation Architecture fulfilling the tamper-proof requirements of blockchain databases allowing nodes to achieve consensus after every persistence dataset migration.

1. Introduction

Historically, blockchain clients have been developed with a focus on two use cases: Validators and Full Nodes. Validators are network actors who, given a particular condition indicated by the consensus protocol, get to propose and commit a block with transactions to the blockchain state. Full Nodes, on the other hand, validate and maintain copies of the state to be accessed by applications that want to query or transact with the blockchain.

However, even though Full Nodes are mission-critical infrastructure components for application development, they are still seen as second-class citizens relative to Validators in terms of their importance. For this reason, various centralized blockchain infrastructure providers had to develop production paradigms such as Alchemy's Supernode Architecture or Infura's Cloud Architecture, highlighting the limitations of Blockchain Clients as production-grade infrastructure.

2. Requirements

3. Client-Server Architecture

3.1 Overview

In the context of the Persistence Module, a client-server architecture indicates a separation of concerns between the middleware and the database engine. In practice, this allows for multiple types of system deployments illustrated in Figures 1-4.

stateDiagram-v2
    Fig1: 1 Machine - 1 Process - 1 Database Engine Process (Figure 1)
    Fig2: 1 Machine - N Processes (Same Identity) - 1 Database Engine Process (Figure 2)

    state Fig1 {
        P: Pocket Core Process
        DB: Database Engine Process
        P --> DB: IPC, TCP/IP, HTTP (local communications)

    }

    state Fig2 {
        PA1: Pocket Core Process (ID A)
        PA2: Pocket Core Process (ID A)
        PA3: Pocket Core Process (ID A)
        B: Database Engine Process

        state join_state2 <<join>>
        PA1 --> join_state2
        PA2 --> join_state2
        PA3 --> join_state2
        join_state2 --> B: IPC, TCP/IP, HTTP (local communications)
    }
stateDiagram-v2
    Fig3: 1 Machines - N Processes (Multi-Identity) - 1 Database Engine Process (Figure 3)
    Fig4: N Machines - N Processes Per Machine (Multi-Identity) - Database Engine Cluster (Figure 4)

    state Fig3 {
        PA: Pocket Core Process (ID A)
        PB: Pocket Core Process (ID B)
        PC: Pocket Core Process (ID C)
        DB3: Database Engine Process

        state join_state3 <<join>>
        PA --> join_state3
        PB --> join_state3
        PC --> join_state3
        join_state3 --> DB3: IPC, TCP/IP, HTTP (local communications)
    }

    state Fig4 {
        P4A: Pocket Core Process (ID A)
        P4B: Pocket Core Process (ID B)
        P4C: Pocket Core Process (ID C)
        DB4: Database Engine Process

        state join_state4 <<join>>
        P4A --> join_state4
        P4B --> join_state4
        P4C --> join_state4
        join_state4 --> DB4: IPC, TCP/IP, HTTP (local communications)
    }

3.2 Database Engine

The selected Database Engine for Pocket, which will often be referred to as “the database engine”, is PostgreSQL. The accompanying research document to this Pre-Planning Specification contains the research through which this decision was made. In addition, PostgreSQL has multiple desirable properties that satisfy requirements such as Schema Definition Mechanism, Deterministic Write Mechanism and Idempotent Dataset Updates.

3.2.1 Configuration

Several approaches can be used to configure communication between the middleware and the database engine. The following is a data structure that contains the necessary attributes:

type DBConfiguration interface {
	Host() URL           # host url where to contact the database engine (e.g. 1.2.3.4, localhost)
	Username() String    # the username used by the middleware to access the database engine
	Password() String    # the password used by the middleware to access the database engine
}

On the database engine, the following configurations needs to be specified:

  1. User role: 1 of Servicer, Validator, Fisherman, Archival or Full Node.

  2. Schemas: 1 or more of Consensus, State, Block Mempool and Local.

These configurations will be referenced throughout this specification to satisfy requirements and complement other mechanisms at different module layers.

3.3 Error Handling

Due to the separation of concerns between the middleware and the database engine, an error handling architecture at the system deployment level must be established to allow fault tolerance strategies in the execution of the system.

3.3.1 Database Engine Error Handling

There are 3 main use cases of error handling when the database engine is the source of the error:

  1. Configuration Errors: In the case of configuration errors, the middleware must propagate errors from database engine and surface them via logs or other system-wide notifications. This is a critical error and must stop the execution of the system until resolved.

  2. Read/Write Errors or Database Engine Unavailable: If any of these errors are returned by the database engine, the middleware can opt into one of the following fallback mechanisms:

    • Provision a temporary in-memory database

    • Retry the operation on another replica

    • Queue the operation and retry once the database engine is restored

    • In addition to these fallback mechanisms, the middleware must surface the issue via logs or other system-wide notifications. This is a critical error and must stop the execution of the system until resolved unless a fallback mechanism is configured.

3.3.2 Middleware Error Handling

The database engine should be configured to handle the following middleware error scenarios:

  1. Invalid data format writes: If the middleware is trying to write data using unsupported formats, the database engine must be equipped to reject these requests with a valid error message that are surfaced by the middleware client via logs or other system-wide notifications.

  2. Long-running queries: All queries to the database engine must be capped to a maximum query timeout and a maximum data output. These must be set at the database engine level configured in case the middleware is to request a query that goes out of bounds. In addition, the database engine must be equipped to reject these requests with a valid error message to be surfaced by the middleware client via logs or other system-wide notifications.

4. Persistence Client Middleware

4.1 Overview

In the context of the Persistence Module, the middleware is the software that sits between the client and the database engine, hence “in the middle” as shown the in the Figure 5.

stateDiagram-v2
    F5: Figure 5

    state F5 {
      IA: Instance A
      IB: Instance B
      M: Middleware\nProcess
      DB: Database Engine\nProcess
      C: Client

      C --> IA: HTTP, WebSockets
      state IA {
          M
      }
      state IB {
          DB
      }
      IA --> IB: TCP/IP, HTTP / IPC
    }

In order to ensure all the requirements described in this document are met, a set of expected behaviours and attributes the middleware is responsible for will need to be defined.

4.2 Persistence Datasets

A dataset is a group of collections that is logically related. For Pocket Network 1.0, we are proposing the following datasets:

  1. Consensus dataset: Contains all the transactions, blocks and quorum certificates of the Pocket Network blockchain. Validators need this data set to achieve Byzantine agreement and for other nodes to verify Byzantine Fault Tolerance.

  2. State dataset: Contains the specific Pocket Network state (nodes, apps, params, accounts, etc) for a particular height. A hashed version of the state dataset is called the state hash.

  3. Block store dataset: A collection of (state dataset, state hash) pairs for every block height stored on the node.

  4. Mempool dataset: Contains a list of all transactions submitted to the Pocket Network but not yet finalized on the blockchain. This dataset is populated through messages gossiped throughout the network and is transient in nature.

  5. Local dataset: Contains all the utility-specific data needed for the different actors of the network to achieve their functions. This dataset is local and only affects an individual node's operation.

Each dataset can be individually accessed by a particular middleware instance, which allows reusability of the data via operations in a multi-node and multi-process environment.

4.2.1 Datasets Schema Definition

There is a one-to-many relationship between a dataset and a set of collections, with a one-to-one relationship between each collection and its structured schema.

Section 5 defines details related to data encoding, but assume that Protocol Buffers are used for the sake of the visualization in Figure 6.

stateDiagram-v2
    F6: Dataset Schema Definition (Figure 6)

    state F6 {
        CDS: Consensus Dataset
        SDS: State Store Dataset
        ODS: Other Datasets...

        state CDS {
            D1: Dataset
            E1: Other
            B: Block
            T: Transaction
            BP: Block Protobuf
            TP: Transaction Protobuf

            D1 --> B: collection 1
            D1 --> T: collection 2
            D1 --> E1: collection 3...N
            B --> BP
            T --> TP
        }

        state SDS {
            SD: Dataset
            E2: ...
            V: Validator
            VP: Validator Protobuf
            SN: Service Node
            SNP: Service Node Protobuf

            SD --> V: collection 1
            SD --> SN: collection 2
            SD --> E2: collection 3...N
            V --> VP
            SN --> SNP
        }
    }

4.2.2 Datasets Schema Migration

Since Pocket Network 1.0 is designed to be build atop a SQL database engine, the schema can be modified using a migration paradigm. Migrations are a series of phases in a structure schema lifecycle, as shown in Figure 6.

stateDiagram-v2
  Fig7: Lifecycle of a Structured Schema (Figure 7)
  state Fig7 {
    CC: Create Collection
    AC: Alter Collection
    MD: Migrate Data
    DC: Drop Collection

    direction LR
    CC --> AC
    AC --> MD
    AC --> AC: repeat between versions
    MD --> DC
  }

Migrations will be tied to specific heights, ensuring that nodes across different state heights (e.g. during state sync) can independently reproduce and verify a local state schema at a particular height. This enables each node to produce the immutability proofs included in the blocks, which will be checked against the block hashes during validation.

4.2.3 State Versions De-duplication Strategy

Given the fact that the selected database engine describes collections in a tabular schema and that the state dataset has to be versioned on every change, a de-duplication strategy is needed to avoid data redundancy and decrease lookup and scan overhead when operating against any given state collection. For this reason, we are proposing the following field in every state collection:

  • Height (height): Indicates the height at which the structure is added to the dataset.

By leveraging this single property, we can define the Create, Update and Delete operations of the CRUD set:

  • Create: Insert a new structure into the collection with the given height value indicating at which height the structure is inserted.

  • Update: Insert a new record of the updated structure with the given height value indicating at which height the structure is being updated (i.e. created).

  • Delete: Though there is an opportunity to prune the data set for efficiency, once a structure (with an address) has been created, it can transition from one state to another but otherwise exists in perpetuity.

CRUD's Read operation naturally follows from the ability to query a SQL database. These attributes and processes allow us to fulfill the different requirements of a state dataset:

  • Historical querying: Query the same structure throughout any given height by filtering by a specific height as a maximum.

4.2.4 Idempotent Writes and Updates

To implement idempotency to our persistence layer, we need to define the following set of rules when doing Create or Update operations over collections and structures:

  • When creating a brand new structure, the operation must include all of its uniquely-identified fields. This will help avoid collisions between existing and new structures.

  • When updating an existing structure, all uniquely-identified fields must be indicated explicitly in the operation. Specifically, timestamp fields such as height must also be specified explicitly to avoid collisions and indecies at the SQL layer must created to avoid collision errors.

4.2.5 Deterministic Write mechanism

Most modern SQL DBMS (database management system) implementations utilize the Transaction model to indicate a transaction as a group of operations to be performed sequentially and logically grouped. This is called [ACID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID) (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability), which are the properties that allow the dataset to stay consistent across operations by enabling capabilities such as rollbacks in case one of the operations comprising an ACID transaction fails or yields an inconsistent dataset state.

Our chosen database engine, Postgresql, defines a transaction model in its official documentation here. It also defines the ability to rollback transactions here. These mechanisms establish the ability to achieve deterministic writes while avoiding issues such as data corruption and race conditions.

5. Blockchain State Validation Architecture

5.1. Overview

The sections above describe the architecture and use of a SQL database engine to enable efficient and fault tolerant data access during various node operations. However, as in most other blockchains, we also need to efficiently compute and prove the integrity of the data.

Alongside the SQL engine operations described above for efficient data access during node operations, Sparse Merkle Trees backed by key-value store data engines will be used to store a serialized version of the dataset in order to do so and achieve tamper-proof immutability.

5.2 State Hash

5.2.1 State Hash Computation

Recall that the state dataset contains the Pocket Network state (i.e. node, apps, params, accounts, etc) after each set of state transitions indicated by the transactions executed at a specific height. Each collection in the state dataset (e.g. Application) will have a corresponding state schema (e.g. Application protobuf definition) containing an address. Each of these collections will have it's own Merkle Tree, yielding a Merkle Root. In the tree, leaf nodes will be represent instances of objects in the collection, whereas inner nodesn act as prefix paths to the leaf based on the object's address. This is often known as an Addressable Merkle Tree in some blockchain projects.

The state hash is computed by concatenating, in lexicographical order, the Merkle Root of each collection and hashing the result.

flowchart TD
    subgraph Block Header
        PrevHash
        Transactions
        QuorumCertificate
        OBH[...]
        subgraph Merkle Tree Roots
            VR[Validators Root]
            AR[Applications Root]
            OSTR[...]
            ROOT[State Hash]
        end
    end

    %% Source of Truth
    subgraph "Protobuf Schema"
        VP([Validator])
        AP([Application])
        OPS([...])
    end

    %% Client Customizable
    subgraph "SQL Schema"
        VT[(Validators Table)]
        AT[(Applications Table)]
        OSS[(...)]
    end

    VP -- Serialization & \n Merkle Tree Insertion --> VR
    AP -- Serialization & \n Merkle Tree Insertion --> AR
    OPS -- Serialization & \n Merkle Tree Insertion --> OSTR

    VR --> ROOT
    AR --> ROOT
    OSTR --> ROOT

    VP -- Schema Definition & \n DB Insertion --> VT
    AP -- Schema Definition & \n DB Insertion --> AT
    OPS -- Schema Definition & \n DB Insertion --> OSS

5.2.2 Immutable State Hash

Each state hash will be persisted alongside a cryptographic digital signature computed via a designated private key (i.e. the block proposer during consensus), serving as proof for validation during local state computation. This proof will be utilized to avoid recalculating previous states and allow the system, provided trusted access to the public key, to have a high degree of confidence in its computed state. The state can be re-calculated using the state hash algorithm if the proof has been tampered with. This proof will be referred to as the state computation proof.

5.3 Key-Value Store

The Merkle Tree mentioned above will be backed by a key-value store database engine to persist the state dataset. In this tree, the key will be the address, a mandatory field of each collection, and the value is a serialized version of that instance of the structure using the schema defined at that height.

5.3.1 Data Encoding

A generic and deterministic data encoding format is needed to encode each structure of each collection (i.e. each leaf of each tree) to compute the immutable state hash. Pocket Network v1 has selected Protocol Buffers, also known as Protobufs, for this task. As outlined in the accompanying research document, Protobuf fulfills all the requirements and performance benchmarks for this implementation. Note that while Pocket Network V1.0 will use a standardized data encoding protocol, likely to be Protobuf, it does not exclude other protocols (e.g. FlatBuffers) from being used in future major releases.

5.4 Cumulative Versioning

An attribute of most Addressable Sparse Merkle Trees is that every new operation for a given does not require the recomputation of the entire trie, rather only the branch elements that are being updated, satisfying our requirement of Cumulative State Versioning. This enables persisting deltas across versions of the immutable state schema rather than copies of the entire trie structure.

5.5 State Verification

To verify any given structure in one of the collections in the state dataset in a Merkle Patricia Trie, the prover (i.e. a full node) needs to only provide the Merkle proof to the verified (e.g. a client or synching node). The Merkle Proof will be composed of a list of (address, serialized protobuf structures), and it is assumed that the client has access to the corresponding merkle root and leaf being verified.

5.6 State Transition

To compute transitions of the state dataset to the immutable schema, we present an algorithm that, given a series of state transitions, the current immutable schema and a private key can compute the new state hash and the state computation proof. See Algorithm 1 as a reference.

5.6.1 State Transition Algorithm

5.6.2 State Transition Sequence Diagram

Below is a sequence diagram showing the end-to-end data flow between the different components during a state transition.

sequenceDiagram
    participant App as Application(s)
    participant PV as Pocket Validator(s)
    participant MP as Tx MemPool
    participant SQLDB as SQL Database
    participant LM as Local Memory
    participant MT as Merkle Tree
    participant KV as Key-Value Store
    participant PN as Pocket Network

    %% Fill Mempool
    loop Propogate Txs through the P2P Network
        App-->>PV: Tx
        PV->>MP: Tx
    end

    %% Leader election
    Note over PV: Selected as round leader

    activate PV

    %% Reap Mempool
    PV->>+MP: Reap Mempool
    MP->>-PV: List of Txs

    loop Validate Each Transaction
        PV->>+SQLDB: <br>
        SQLDB->>-PV: Read necessary data for tx
        PV->>PV: Validate transaction
        PV->>PV: Include Tx in block proposal
        PV->>SQLDB: Write database if valid
    end
    Note over PV: failed transactions are rolled back

    %% Serialize
    PV ->>+LM: <br>
    LM ->>-PV: Retrieve collection schemas
    PV ->>PV: Serialize updated/added structures

    loop Update/Inesrt each structure
        PV ->>+MT: Insert or update leaf
        MT ->>+KV: <br>
        KV ->>-MT: Store (addr, serialized proto)
        MT ->>-PV: <br>
    end

    loop for each collection in each dataset
        PV ->>+MT: <br>
        MT ->>-PV: Retrieve merkle root(s)
    end

    PV ->>PV: Compute state hash<br>and prepare block

    PV-->>PN: Propose block to network
    note over PN: Commit the new block

    deactivate PV

Dissenting Opinions / Attack Vectors / FAQ

1. Why not just store the state in a tree like every other blockchain?

Pocket Network's primary difference from most other blockchains is that it is an application-specific blockchain optimized to be a decentralized Web3 RPC middleware layer. Unlike smart contract blockchains, arbitrary data cannot be uploaded by the users, as that would break the immutable state schema based on predefined collections of structures.

However, this specification still provides a Blockchain State Validation architecture, which leverages Sparse Merkle Trees to create a tamper-proof representation of the blockchain state at any given height. This achieves the property of having immutable yet still upgradable schemas.

The only tradeoff concerns data replication of the immutable database schema, which can be solved via pruning and hashing of the tree.

2. Can an attacker just modify the mutable database and make a node commit to an invalid state?

This attack vector can still exist in persistence architectures built only on top of trees. However, this would break functionality when proof for the local state is computed by yielding an invalid state hash.

This would cause the node with an invalid state to fall out of state sync or consensus, and inherently start an unsupported fork.

3. Isn’t this approach more susceptible to errors as there are more moving parts?

The only additional step this architecture includes, relative to most blockchains, is computing the leaf nodes via operations on the mutable database. However, we believe that this is a valid tradeoff as it can be easily managed as a separate submodule of the persistence layer.

Candidate Features / Would Like to Haves / Open Questions

1. What Kind of Merkle Tree is going to be used?

This is still an active area of research, and the specification will be updated once it is complete.

The use of IAVL has been ruled out due to the inefficiencies learn from Pocket Network v0 after its adoption from Tendermint. Some potential alternatives include

2. What Kind of Key-Value store database engine is going to back the Merkle Tree?

This is still an active area of research, and the specification will be updated once it is complete. Some potential solutions include:

3. How will light clients store data?

As a decentralized RPC provider, light clients are a lower priority in the context of the Pocket Network. Optimizing the persistence layer of most protocol level actors today, which require a full but efficient datastore, is the goal of this specification until further revisions.

4. Add a key/value store for caching data alongside a relational database that does not hinder performance and avoids too much data duplication.

This optimization can be tackled in future versions of the specification. Specifically, building interfaces between the persistence module and other caching technologies such as Redis or ElasticSearch are available.

References

[1] Persistence Spec Research Document

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID

[4] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/tutorial-transactions.html

[5] https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers

[6] https://eth.wiki/fundamentals/rlp

Spec Coverage Checklist

NOTE: This is still a WIP and a non-exhaustive

For those implementing the specification, below is a checklist that can be used as a reference to determine the spec coverage implementation.

  1. Client-Server Architecture

  • 3.2.1 Configuration

  • 3.3.1 Database Engine Error Handling

  • 3.3.2 Middleware Error Handling

  1. Persistence Client Middleware

  • 4.2. Persistence datasets implemented

  • 4.2.1 Persistence schema defined (Protobuf & SQL)

  1. Blockchain State Validation Architecture

  • 5.2.1

  • 5.3.1

  • 5.5

  • 5.6

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