Banff.14

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 24.

Banff.12 - Cortina Prep

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 24.

Networking

• Removed linger setting on P2P connections
• Improved error message when failing to calculate peer uptimes
• Removed EngineType from P2P response messages
• Added context cancellation during dynamic IP updates
• Reduced the maximum P2P reconnect delay from 1 hour to 1 minute

Consensus

• Added support to switch from Avalanche consensus to Snowman consensus
• Added support for routing consensus messages to either Avalanche or Snowman consensus on the same chain
• Removed usage of deferred evaluation of the handler.Consensus in the Avalanche OnFinished callback
• Dropped inbound Avalanche consensus messages after switching to Snowman consensus
• Renamed the Avalanche VM metrics prefix from avalanche_{chainID}_vm_ to avalanche_{chainID}_vm_avalanche
• Replaced consensus and decision dispatchers with block, tx, and vertex dispatchers
• Removed Avalanche bootstrapping restarts during the switch to Snowman consensus

AVM

• Added avm block execution manager
• Added avm block builder
• Refactored avm transaction syntactic verification
• Refactored avm transaction semantic verification
• Refactored avm transaction execution
• Added avm mempool gossip
• Removed block timer interface from avm mempool
• Moved toEngine channel into the avm mempool
• Added GetUTXOFromID to the avm state.Chain interface
• Added unpopulated MerkleRoot to avm blocks
• Added avm transaction based metrics
• Replaced error strings with error interfaces in the avm mempool

PlatformVM

• Added logs when the local nodes stake amount changes
• Moved platformvm message package into components
• Replaced error strings with error interfaces in the platformvm mempool

Warp

• Added ID method to warp.UnsignedMessage
• Improved warp.Signature verification error descriptions

Miscellaneous

• Improved merkledb locking to allow concurrent read access through trieViews
• Fixed Banff transaction signing with ledger when using the wallet
• Emitted github artifacts after successful builds
• Added non-blocking bounded queue
• Converted the x.Parser helper to be a block.Parser interface from a tx.Parser interface

Cleanup

• Separated dockerhub image publishing from the kurtosis test workflow
• Exported various errors to use in testing
• Removed the vms/components/state package
• Replaced ad-hoc linked hashmaps with the standard data-structure
• Removed usr/local/lib/avalanche from deb packages
• Standardized usage of constants.UnitTestID

Examples

• Added P-chain RemoveSubnetValidatorTx example using the wallet
• Added X-chain CreateAssetTx example using the wallet

Configs

• Added support to specify HTTP server timeouts
  • --http-read-timeout
  • --http-read-header-timeout
  • --http-write-timeout
  • --http-idle-timeout

APIs

• Added avm block APIs
  • avm.getBlock
  • avm.getBlockByHeight
  • avm.getHeight
• Converted avm APIs to only surface accepted state
• Deprecated all ipcs APIs
  • ipcs.publishBlockchain
  • ipcs.unpublishBlockchain
  • ipcs.getPublishedBlockchains
• Deprecated all keystore APIs
  • keystore.createUser
  • keystore.deleteUser
  • keystore.listUsers
  • keystore.importUser
  • keystore.exportUser
• Deprecated the avm/pubsub API endpoint
• Deprecated various avm APIs
  • avm.getAddressTxs
  • avm.getBalance
  • avm.getAllBalances
  • avm.createAsset
  • avm.createFixedCapAsset
  • avm.createVariableCapAsset
  • avm.createNFTAsset
  • avm.createAddress
  • avm.listAddresses
  • avm.exportKey
  • avm.importKey
  • avm.mint
  • avm.sendNFT
  • avm.mintNFT
  • avm.import
  • avm.export
  • avm.send
  • avm.sendMultiple
• Deprecated the avm/wallet API endpoint
  • wallet.issueTx
  • wallet.send
  • wallet.sendMultiple
• Deprecated various platformvm APIs
  • platform.exportKey
  • platform.importKey
  • platform.getBalance
  • platform.createAddress
  • platform.listAddresses
  • platform.getSubnets
  • platform.addValidator
  • platform.addDelegator
  • platform.addSubnetValidator
  • platform.createSubnet
  • platform.exportAVAX
  • platform.importAVAX
  • platform.createBlockchain
  • platform.getBlockchains
  • platform.getStake
  • platform.getMaxStakeAmount
  • platform.getRewardUTXOs
• Deprecated the stake field in the platform.getTotalStake response in favor of weight

Banff.11 - Plugin Registration Regression

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 24.

Plugins

• Removed error from logging.NoLog#Write
• Added logging to the static VM factory usage
• Fixed incorrect error being returned from subprocess.Bootstrap

Ledger

• Added ledger tx parsing support

MerkleDB

• Added explicit consistency guarantees when committing multiple merkledb.trieViews to disk at once
• Removed reliance on premature root calculations for merkledb.trieView validity tracking
• Updated x/merkledb/README.md

Banff.10 - Warp UX Improvements

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 24.

MerkleDB

• Removed parent tracking from merkledb.trieView
• Removed base caches from merkledb.trieView
• Fixed error handling during merkledb intermediate node eviction
• Replaced values larger than 32 bytes with a hash in the merkledb hash representation

AVM

• Refactored avm API tx creation into a standalone Spender implementation
• Migrated UTXO interfaces from the platformvm into the components for use in the avm
• Refactored avm tx.SyntacticVerify to expect the config rather than the fee fields

Miscellaneous

• Updated the minimum golang version to v1.19.6
• Fixed rpcchainvm signal handling to only shutdown upon receipt of SIGTERM
• Added warp.Signature#NumSigners for better cost tracking support
• Added snow.Context#PublicKey to provide access to the local node's BLS public key inside the VM execution environment
• Renamed Avalanche consensus metric prefix to avalanche_{chainID}_avalanche
• Specified an explicit TCP Linger timeout of 15 seconds
• Updated the secp256k1 library to v4.1.0

Cleanup

• Removed support for the --whitelisted-subnets flag
• Removed unnecessary abstractions from the app package
• Removed Factory embedding from platformvm.VM and avm.VM
• Removed validator package from the platformvm
• Removed timer.TimeoutManager
• Replaced snow.Context in Factory.New with logging.Logger
• Renamed set.Bits#Len to BitLen and set.Bits#HammingWeight to Len to align with set.Bits64

Banff.9 - gRPC Plugin Protocol

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 23.

Note: The --whitelisted-subnets flag was deprecated in v1.9.6. This is the last release in which it will be supported. Use --track-subnets instead.

Monitoring

• Added warning when the P2P server IP is private
• Added warning when the HTTP server IP is potentially publicly reachable
• Removed merkledb.trieView#calculateIDs tracing when no recalculation is needed

Databases

• Capped the number of goroutines that merkledb.trieView#calculateIDsConcurrent will create
• Removed nodb package
• Refactored Batch implementations to share common code
• Added Batch.Replay invariant tests
• Converted to use require in all database interface tests

Cryptography

• Moved the secp256k1 implementations to a new secp256k1 package out of the crypto package
• Added rfc6979 compliance tests to the secp256k1 signing implementation
• Removed unused cryptography implementations ed25519, rsa, and rsapss
• Removed unnecessary cryptography interfaces crypto.Factory, crypto.RecoverableFactory, crypto.PublicKey, and crypto.PrivateKey
• Added verification when parsing secp256k1 public keys to ensure usage of the compressed format

API

• Removed delegators from platform.getCurrentValidators unless a single nodeID is requested
• Added delegatorCount and delegatorWeight to the validators returned by platform.getCurrentValidators

Documentation

• Improved documentation on the block.WithVerifyContext interface
• Fixed --public-ip and --public-ip-resolution-service CLI flag descriptions
• Updated README.md to explicitly reference SECURITY.md

Coreth

• Enabled state sync by default when syncing from an empty database
• Increased block gas limit to 15M for Cortina Network Upgrade
• Added back file tracer endpoint
• Added back JS tracer

Miscellaneous

• Added allowedNodes to the subnet config for validatorOnly subnets
• Removed the hashicorp/go-plugin dependency to improve plugin flexibility
• Replaced specialized bag implementations with generic bag implementations
• Added mempool package to the avm
• Added chain.State#IsProcessing to simplify integration with block.WithVerifyContext
• Added StateSyncMinVersion to sync.ClientConfig
• Added validity checks for InitialStakeDuration in a custom network genesis
• Removed unnecessary reflect call when marshalling an empty slice

Cleanup

• Renamed teleporter package to warp
• Replaced bool flags in P-chain state diffs with an enum
• Refactored subnet configs to more closely align between the primary network and subnets
• Simplified the utxo.Spender interface
• Removed unused field common.Config#Validators

Banff.8 - PROXY Protocol

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 22.

Note: The --whitelisted-subnets flag was deprecated in v1.9.6 and may be removed in v1.9.9.

Networking

• Added TCP proxy support for p2p network traffic
• Added p2p network client utility for directly messaging the p2p network

Consensus

• Guaranteed delivery of App messages to the VM, regardless of sync status
• Added EngineType to consensus context

MerkleDB - Alpha

• Added initial implementation of a path-based merkle-radix tree
• Added initial implementation of state sync powered by the merkledb

APIs

• Updated platform.getCurrentValidators to return uptime as a percentage
• Updated platform.get*Validators to avoid iterating over the staker set when requesting specific nodeIDs
• Cached staker data in platform.get*Validators to significantly reduce DB IO
• Added stakeAmount and weight to all staker responses in P-chain APIs
• Deprecated stakeAmount in staker responses from P-chain APIs
• Removed creationTxFee from info.GetTxFeeResponse
• Removed address from platformvm.GetBalanceRequest

Fixes

• Fixed RemoveSubnetValidatorTx weight diff corruption
• Released network lock before attempting to close a peer connection
• Fixed X-Chain last accepted block initialization to use the genesis block, not the stop vertex after linearization
• Removed plugin directory handling from AMI generation
• Removed copy of plugins directory from tar script

Cleanup

• Removed unused rpm packaging scripts
• Removed engine dependency from chain registrants
• Removed unused field from chain handler log
• Linted custom test chains.Manager
• Used generic btree implementation
• Deleted utils.CopyBytes
• Updated rjeczalik/notify from v0.9.2 to v0.9.3

Miscellaneous

• Added AVM state.Chain interface
• Added generic atomic value utility
• Added test for the AMI builder during RCs
• Converted cache implementations to use generics
• Added optional cache eviction callback

Banff.7 - Subnet Validator Lookups

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 22.

Fixes

• Fixed subnet validator lookup regression

Banff.6 - Dynamic State Syncing Support

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 22.

Consensus

• Added StateSyncMode to the return of StateSummary#Accept to support syncing chain state while tracking the chain as a light client
• Added AcceptedFrontier to Chits messages
• Reduced unnecessary confidence resets during consensus by applying AcceptedFrontiers during QueryFailed handling
• Added EngineType for consensus messages in the p2p message definitions
• Updated vertex.DAGVM interface to support linearization

Configs

• Added --plugin-dir flag. The default value is [DATADIR]/plugins
• Removed --build-dir flag. The location of the avalanchego binary is no longer considered when looking for the plugins directory. Subnet maintainers should ensure that their node is able to properly discover plugins, as the default location is likely changed. See --plugin-dir
• Changed the default value of --api-keystore-enabled to false
• Added --track-subnets flag as a replacement of --whitelisted-subnets

Fixes

• Fixed NAT-PMP router discovery and port mapping
• Fixed --staking-enabled=false setting to correctly start subnet chains and report healthy
• Fixed message logging in the consensus handler

VMs

• Populated non-trivial logger in the rpcchainvm Server's snow.Context
• Updated rpcchainvm proto definitions to use enums
• Added Block format and definition to the AVM
• Removed proposervm height index reset

Metrics

• Added avalanche_network_peer_connected_duration_average metric
• Added avalanche_api_calls_processing metric
• Added avalanche_api_calls metric
• Added avalanche_api_calls_duration metric

Documentation

• Added wallet example to create stakeable.LockOut outputs
• Improved ubuntu deb install instructions

Miscellaneous

• Updated ledger-avalanche to v0.6.5
• Added linter to ban the usage of fmt.Errorf without format directives
• Added List to the buffer#Deque interface
• Added Index to the buffer#Deque interface
• Added SetLevel to the Logger interface
• Updated auth API to use the new jwt standard

Banff.5 - Warp Messaging

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 21.

Subnet Messaging

• Added subnet message serialization format
• Added subnet message signing
• Replaced bls.SecretKey with a teleporter.Signer in the snow.Context
• Moved SNLookup into the validators.State interface to support non-whitelisted chainID to subnetID lookups
• Added support for non-whitelisted subnetIDs for fetching the validator set at a given height
• Added subnet message verification
• Added teleporter.AnycastID to denote a subnet message not intended for a specific chain

Fixes

• Added re-gossip of updated validator IPs
• Fixed rpcchainvm.BatchedParseBlock to correctly wrap returned blocks
• Removed incorrect uintptr handling in the generic codec
• Removed message latency tracking on messages being sent to itself

Coreth

• Added support for eth_call over VM2VM messaging
• Added config flags for tx pool behavior

Miscellaneous

• Added networking package README.md
• Removed pagination of large db messages over gRPC
• Added Size to the generic codec to reduce allocations
• Added UnpackLimitedBytes and UnpackLimitedStr to the manual packer
• Added SECURITY.md
• Exposed proposer list from the proposervm's Windower interface
• Added health and bootstrapping client helpers that block until the node is healthy
• Moved bit sets from the ids package to the set package
• Added more wallet examples

Banff.4 - VM BLS Access

This version is backwards compatible to v1.9.0. It is optional, but encouraged. The supported plugin version is 20.

This version modifies the db format. The db format is compatible with v1.9.3, but not v1.9.2 or earlier. After running a node with v1.9.4 attempting to run a node with a version earlier than v1.9.3 may report a fatal error on startup.

PeerList Gossip Optimization

• Added gossip tracking to the peer instance to only gossip new IPs to a connection
• Added PeerListAck message to report which TxIDs provided by the PeerList message were tracked
• Added TxIDs to the PeerList message to unique-ify nodeIDs across validation periods
• Added TxID mappings to the gossip tracker

Validator Set Tracking

• Renamed GetValidators to Get on the validators.Manager interface
• Removed Set, AddWeight, RemoveWeight, and Contains from the validators.Manager interface
• Added Add to the validators.Manager interface
• Removed Set from the validators.Set interface
• Added Add and Get to the validators.Set interface
• Modified validators.Set#Sample to return ids.NodeID rather than valdiators.Validator
• Replaced the validators.Validator interface with a struct
• Added a BLS public key field to validators.Validator
• Added a TxID field to validators.Validator
• Improved and documented error handling within the validators.Set interface
• Added BLS public keys to the result of GetValidatorSet
• Added BuildBlockWithContext as an optional VM method to build blocks at a specific P-chain height
• Added VerifyWithContext as an optional block method to verify blocks at a specific P-chain height

Uptime Tracking

• Added ConnectedSubnet message handling to the chain handler
• Added SubnetConnector interface and implemented it in the platformvm
• Added subnet uptimes to p2p pong messages
• Added subnet uptimes to platform.getCurrentValidators
• Added subnetID as an argument to info.Uptime

Fixes

• Fixed incorrect context cancellation of escaped contexts from grpc servers
• Fixed race condition between API initialization and shutdown
• Fixed race condition between NAT traversal initialization and shutdown
• Fixed race condition during beacon connection tracking
• Added race detection to the E2E tests
• Added additional message and sender tests

Coreth

• Improved header and logs caching using maximum accepted depth cache
• Added config option to perform database inspection on startup
• Added configurable transaction indexing to reduce disk usage
• Added special case to allow transactions using Nick's Method to bypass API level replay protection
• Added counter metrics for number of accepted/processed logs

APIs

• Added indices to the return values of GetLastAccepted and GetContainerByID on the indexer API client
• Removed unnecessary locking from the info API

Chain Data

• Added ChainDataDir to the snow.Context to allow blockchains to canonically access disk outside avalanchego's database
• Added --chain-data-dir as a CLI flag to specify the base directory for all ChainDataDirs

Miscellaneous

• Removed Version from the peer.Network interface
• Removed Pong from the peer.Network interface
• Reduced memory allocations inside the system throttler
• Added CChainID to the snow.Context
• Converted all sorting to utilize generics
• Converted all set management to utilize generics