archethic-foundation / archethic-foundation/archethic-node

NetworkView hash does not represent transaction view

Open
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bug P2P
Dominant language
Elixir
Stars
82
Forks
24
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

### Describe the problem you discovered

NetworkView is a hash of different data (mainly network chains last transaction address) aiming to ensure validation nodes have the same network view of the network chains.
But this hash is updated directly when a network transaction is replicated while the data represented by the transaction may be applicable in future.
For example the node shared secret transaction will update the network view hash directly but the application of this transaction is delayed to a specific date (00:00 for instance).

So it is possible that a welcome node get the network view hash just before replicating the node shared secret transaction and send the Start Mining message to validation nodes. The validation nodes receive the message after replicating the node shared secret transaction and so the hash will be different. Therefore the validation nodes will not start the validation and the welcome node will forward the transaction.
But in fact this node shared secret transaction would not affect the transaction and so the validation nodes could have validated the transaction.

This example does not cause any problem, but if part of the validation nodes start the validation and other does not it could create issue when the welcome node forward the transaction.

### Describe the solution you'd like

The network view hash should be computed based on the transaction validation time and get the same information as the validation nodes will do.
The network hash could even hash not the transaction addresses but directly the information them self. (To analyze)

### Epic

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by locating the NetworkView hash computation and the handling of transaction validation times, then compare both with the information used by validation nodes. Done means delayed transactions do not alter the hash before their validation time and nodes compute matching network views; the alternative of hashing transaction data directly still requires analysis.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
elixir
Domain
blockchain, distributed-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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