2019-05-08 Meeting notes: upgrading a network

Resources

Discussion and questions

• As long as a node runs software that adheres to the blockchain protocol, it doesn’t matter what software it runs. Blocks and state transitions are all you need.

  • Block format and block state transition are what matters

• Requirement - maintain the blocks and the state of the network

• What do we need to do know to prepare for upgrading?

• What’s the process to upgrade if there is a change to how blocks are processed or managed?

  • Assume a requirement to not create a hard fork

• Does a node need to be able to serve blocks from 0-n at all times?
  No. We have snapshots from past node versions.
  If someone wants to rebuild and wants to pay for the support, we can provide a rebuild service.

• Proposal: Network supports current and most previous software versions.

  • RNode v1 is most recent version

  • RNode v2 is the updated version that supports all of what's in v1 to work and all of v2 to work

  • To mitigate risk of bugs we

• Proposal

  • Blocks need to hold the version number

  • When we need to make an upgrade to the network that would be considered a breaking change in the blockchain protocol

  • Announce to the communiyt

  • Support adding blocks from version 1 and version 2 and announce the block number when nodes will stop accepting blocks from version 1

  • Requires specifying and communicating when version 1 will no longer be honored.

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Risks

• Running multiple versions of RNode on a network will create bugs

Tickets

• How does the coop publish and share the genesis block?

• We need business decision for how to request block in the past beyond the current finalized block + defined period

• Document the path to going back to genesis by running older versions of RNode and upgrading up to the point you are able to reproduce the tuplespace since genesis

• Document process for upgrade

  • Includes taking a snapshot

• Is the RNode version noted in every block?

• Make decisions about how to manage versioning semantics

Decisions

• Acceptance criteria for upgrading the platform: Done when you can introduce a forking change and migrate a testnet.