Address certain corner cases of time-travel queries by block hash

Time-travel queries introduced in PR #1397 might still return incorrect results in certain circumstances. A query like query { things(block: { hash: $hash }) { ... } } might return data from different blocks if either

• [H1] the block with the given hash is not on the chain starting at the subgraph's current head
• [H2] the block gets removed from the subgraph's chain because of a block reorganization running concurrently with query execution (solved by PR #1801, not an issue anymore, only mentioned for documentation purposes)

Users can make sure they do not encounter this problem by only querying per block hash for blocks that are final, and by ensuring that the block hash is on the main chain.

Problem H1 can happen if we downloaded a block with $hash that was later removed from the subgraph's chain because of a reorganization, and is possible for any block, no matter whether it can be considered final or not. The query should return an error, as the block is not on the main chain, but might return successfully. The data returned will be from the block on the main chain that has the same number as block $hash.

Problem H2 can only happen for blocks that can not be considered final yet; for graph_node, that means that they are within REORG_THRESHOLD of the current chain head, but in practice only affects blocks within two or three blocks of the chain head. The query should return an error, as the block $hash is no longer on the main chain when the query finishes, but will return successfully with data that might come from either the block with $hash or one of the siblings with the same number that graph-node downloaded while it was processing the query.

Solving H1

Solving this issue requires that we have the infrastructure in place to answer the question "Is the block $hash on the chain starting at the subgraph's current head?"

Phase 1 of the block explorer will make it possible to distinguish between blocks on the main chain and ommers. If block $hash is at least REORG_THRESHOLD away from the chain head, we reject the query if the block is an ommer. For blocks $hash within REORG_THRESHOLD of the chain head, we will keep a list of (block_hash, block_number) for each subgraph, tying the subgraph's current head to the finalized chain, and reject the query if $hash is not in that list.

Solving H2

For this, we need to detect that the subgraph's view of the chain was reorganized while the query was running; this is only necessary for blocks that are not final yet, i.e., that are within REORG_THRESHOLD of the chain head. To support this check, we will add a generation attribute to each SubgraphDeployment that is incremented every time the subgraph's chain is reorganized. We retrieve the generation attribute before we start executing the query, and check that it has not changed after we have finished executing the query. If it did change, we report an error to the user.

Time-travel queries by block number

Problem H1 does not affect these queries, but problem H2 could. It might be worth putting these checks in place when doing a time-travel query by block number, i.e. get the hash of the block with the given number before executing the query, and then executing as if the user had given us that hash. That ensures that the result of such a query comes from a consistent state of the chain.

Inizia esaminando PR #1397 e il lavoro sul block explorer in PR #1383 per comprendere il percorso esistente delle query di viaggio nel tempo. Analizza i casi H1 e H2 descritti qui, inclusi i controlli della catena finalizzata e le riorganizzazioni della catena del subgraph. Il lavoro è completato quando le query rifiutano gli hash che non si trovano sulla main chain e rilevano le riorganizzazioni durante l’esecuzione, dopo aver valutato il comportamento proposto per la coerenza del numero di blocco.