rosetta-validator

Once you create a Rosetta Server, you'll need to test its performance and correctness. This validation tool makes that easy!

What is Rosetta?

Rosetta is a new project from Coinbase to standardize the process of deploying and interacting with blockchains. With an explicit specification to adhere to, all parties involved in blockchain development can spend less time figuring out how to integrate with each other and more time working on the novel advances that will push the blockchain ecosystem forward. In practice, this means that any blockchain project that implements the requirements outlined in this specification will enable exchanges, block explorers, and wallets to integrate with much less communication overhead and network-specific work.

Run the Validator

1. Start your Rosetta Server (and the blockchain node it connects to if it is not a single binary.
2. Start the validator using make SERVER_URL=<server URL> validate.
3. Examine processed blocks using make watch-blocks. You can also print transactions by setting LOG_TRANSACTIONS="true" in the environment or as a make argument.
4. Watch for errors in the processing logs. Any error will cause the validator to stop.
5. Analyze benchmarks from validator-data/block_benchmarks.csv and validator-data/account_benchmarks.csv by setting LOG_BENCHMARKS="true" in the environment or as a make argument.

Setting the Server URL

The validator needs the URL of the Rosetta server configured. This can be set as an environment variable named SERVER_URL, passed as an argument to make (ex: make SERVER_URL=<server url> validate) or editing Makefile itself.

Bootstrapping Balances

Blockchains that set balances in genesis must create a bootstrap_balances.csv file in the /validator-data directory and pass BOOTSTRAP_BALANCES=true as an argument to make. If balances are not bootsrapped and balances are set in genesis, reconciliation will fail.

There is an example file in examples/bootstrap_balances.csv.

Re-orgable Blockchains

There is no additional setting required to support blockchains with reorgs. This is handled automatically!

Development

• make deps to install dependencies
• make test to run tests
• make lint to lint the source code (included generated code)

Correctness Checks

This tool performs a variety of correctness checks using the Rosetta Server. If any correctness check fails, the validator will exit and print out a detailed message explaining the error.

Response Correctness

The validator uses the autogenerated Go Client package to communicate with the Rosetta Server and assert that responses adhere to the Rosetta Standard.

Duplicate Hashes

The validator checks that a block hash or transaction hash is never duplicated.

Non-negative Balances

The validator checks that an account balance does not go negative from any operations.

Balance Reconciliation

Active Addresses

The validator checks that the balance of an account computed by its operations is equal to the balance of the account according to the node. If this balance is not identical, the validator will exit.

Inactive Addresses

The validator randomly checks the balances of accounts that aren't involved in any transactions. The balances of accounts could change on the blockchain node without being included in an operation returned by the Rosetta Server. Recall that ALL balance-changing operations must be returned by the Rosetta Server.

Future Work

• Automatically test the correctness of a Rosetta Client SDK by constructing, signing, and submitting a transaction. This can be further extended by ensuring broadcast transactions eventually land in a block.
• Change logging to utilize a more advanced output mechanism than CSV.

License

This project is available open source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License.

© 2020 Coinbase