Many long-established clients accumulate bloat over time. This often occurs due to the need to support legacy features for existing users or through attempts to implement overly ambitious software. The result is often complex, difficult-to-maintain, and error-prone systems.
In contrast, our philosophy is rooted in simplicity. We strive to write minimal code, prioritize clarity, and embrace simplicity in design. We believe this approach is the best way to build a client that is both fast and resilient. By adhering to these principles, we will be able to iterate fast and explore next-generation features early, either from the Ethereum roadmap or from innovations from the L2s.
Read more about our engineering philosophy here
- Ensure effortless setup and execution across all target environments.
- Be vertically integrated. Have the minimal amount of dependencies.
- Be structured in a way that makes it easy to build on top of it, i.e rollups, vms, etc.
- Have a simple type system. Avoid having generics leaking all over the codebase.
- Have few abstractions. Do not generalize until you absolutely need it. Repeating code two or three times can be fine.
- Prioritize code readability and maintainability over premature optimizations.
- Avoid concurrency split all over the codebase. Concurrency adds complexity. Only use where strictly necessary.
make localnet
This make target will:
- Build our node inside a docker image.
- Fetch our fork ethereum package, a private testnet on which multiple ethereum clients can interact.
- Start the localnet with kurtosis.
If everything went well, you should be faced with our client's logs (ctrl-c to leave)
To stop everything, simply run:
make stop-localnet
To build the node, you will need the rust toolchain:
- First, install asdf:
- Add the rust plugin:
asdf plugin-add rust https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-rust.git
- cd into the project and run:
asdf install
You now should be able to build the client:
make build
Currently, the database is libmdbx
, it will be set up
when you start the client. The location of the db's files will depend on your OS:
- Mac:
~/Library/Application Support/ethereum_rust
- Linux:
~/.config/ethereum_rust
You can delete the db with:
cargo run --bin ethereum_rust -- removedb
For testing, we're using three kinds of tests.
These are the official execution spec tests, you can execute them with:
make test
This will download the test cases from the official execution spec tests repo and run them with our glue code
under cmd/ef_tests/tests
.
The second kind are each crate's tests, you can run them like this:
make test CRATE=<crate>
For example:
make test CRATE="ethereum_rust-blockchain"
Finally, we have End-to-End tests with hive. Hive is a system which simply sends RPC commands to our node, and expects a certain response. You can read more about it here. Hive tests are categorized by "simulations', and test instances can be filtered with a regex:
make run-hive-debug SIMULATION=<simulation> TEST_PATTERN=<test-regex>
This is an example of a Hive simulation called ethereum/rpc-compat
, which will specificaly
run chain id and transaction by hash rpc tests:
make run-hive SIMULATION=ethereum/rpc-compat TEST_PATTERN="/eth_chainId|eth_getTransactionByHash"
If you want debug output from hive, use the run-hive-debug instead:
make run-hive-debug SIMULATION=ethereum/rpc-compat TEST_PATTERN="*"
This example runs every test under rpc, with debug output
Example run:
cargo run --bin ethereum_rust -- --network test_data/genesis-kurtosis.json
The network
argument is mandatory, as it defines the parameters of the chain.
For more information about the different cli arguments check out the next section.
Ethereum Rust supports the following command line arguments:
--network <FILE>
: Receives aGenesis
struct in json format. This is the only argument which is required. You can look at some example genesis files attest_data/genesis*
.--datadir <DIRECTORY>
: Receives the name of the directory where the Database is located.--import <FILE>
: Receives an rlp encodedChain
object (aka a list ofBlock
s). You can look at the example chain file attest_data/chain.rlp
.--http.addr <ADDRESS>
: Listening address for the http rpc server. Default value: localhost.--http.port <PORT>
: Listening port for the http rpc server. Default value: 8545.--authrpc.addr <ADDRESS>
: Listening address for the authenticated rpc server. Default value: localhost.--authrpc.port <PORT>
: Listening port for the authenticated rpc server. Default value: 8551.--authrpc.jwtsecret <FILE>
: Receives the jwt secret used for authenticated rpc requests. Default value: jwt.hex.--p2p.addr <ADDRESS>
: Default value: 0.0.0.0.--p2p.port <PORT>
: Default value: 30303.--discovery.addr <ADDRESS>
: UDP address for P2P discovery. Default value: 0.0.0.0.--discovery.port <PORT>
: UDP port for P2P discovery. Default value: 30303.--bootnodes <BOOTNODE_LIST>
: Comma separated enode URLs for P2P discovery bootstrap.
Add support to follow a post-Merge localnet as a read-only RPC Node. This first milestone will only support a canonical chain (every incoming block has to be the child of the current head).
RPC endpoints
debug_getRawBlock
✅debug_getRawHeader
✅debug_getRawReceipts
✅debug_getRawTransaction
✅engine_exchangeCapabilities
engine_exchangeTransitionConfiguration
✅engine_newPayload
✅eth_blobBaseFee
✅eth_blockNumber
✅eth_call
(at head block) ✅eth_chainId
✅eth_createAccessList
(at head block) ✅eth_estimateGas
✅eth_feeHistory
eth_getBalance
(at head block) ✅eth_getBlockByHash
✅eth_getBlockByNumber
✅eth_getBlockReceipts
✅eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber
✅eth_getCode
(at head block) ✅eth_getFilterChanges
eth_getFilterLogs
eth_getLogs
eth_getStorageAt
(at head block) ✅eth_getTransactionByBlockHashAndIndex
✅eth_getTransactionByBlockNumberAndIndex
✅eth_getTransactionByHash
✅eth_getTransactionCount
✅eth_newBlockFilter
eth_newFilter
eth_newPendingTransactionFilter
eth_uninstallFilter
See issues and progress: https://github.com/lambdaclass/ethereum_rust/milestone/1
Implement support for block reorganizations and historical state queries. This milestone involves persisting the state trie to enable efficient access to historical states and implementing a tree structure for the blockchain to manage multiple chain branches.
RPC endpoints
engine_forkchoiceUpdated
(withoutpayloadAttributes
)eth_call
(at any block) ✅eth_createAccessList
(at any block) ✅eth_getBalance
(at any block) ✅eth_getCode
(at any block) ✅eth_getProof
✅eth_getStorageAt
(at any block) ✅
See issues and progress: https://github.com/lambdaclass/ethereum_rust/milestone/4
Add the ability to build new payloads, so that the consensus client can propose new blocks based on transactions received from the RPC endpoints.
RPC endpoints
engine_forkchoiceUpdated
(withpayloadAttributes
)engine_getPayload
eth_sendRawTransaction
✅
Implement DevP2P protocol, including RLPx p2p
and eth
features. This will let us get and send blocks and transactions from other nodes. We'll add the transactions we receive to the mempool. We'll also download blocks from other nodes when we get payloads where the parent isn't in our local chain.
RPC endpoints
admin_nodeInfo
✅
See issues and progress: https://github.com/lambdaclass/ethereum_rust/milestone/2
Add snap sync protocol, which lets us get a recent copy of the blockchain state instead of going through all blocks from genesis. Since we don't support older versions of the spec by design, this is a prerequisite to being able to sync the node with public networks, including mainnet.
RPC endpoints
eth_syncing
See issues and progress: https://github.com/lambdaclass/ethereum_rust/milestone/3
In the next sections, you can dive further into the code internals.