Orbs Network — v1.3.6 fixes
The Orbs Network Proof of Stake system is based on both Ethereum and a virtual chain processing its data inside the Orbs blockchain. On December 15th a problem was discovered where some delegations did not register over the Ethereum-to-Orbs Network bridge. After some investigation, it was realized that 13 delegate commands did not register, and that caused some discrepancies in the delegation reward calculation, totaling to 10,929 Orbs which are missing from the total rewards that are to be distributed in the upcoming distribution.
The problem originated in the Delegate event in the OrbsVoting contract Delegate function, which was not being forwarded. As the investigation continued, it was apparent that data is missing starting from around November 24th. This was a result of a network update that was made that day, when version 1.3.2 was made available to the network.
Version 1.3.2 included multiple fixes and improvements, one of which was an upgrade to the go-ethereum library used to enable access to Ethereum from within Orbs contracts. That version update includes changes to the way ABI is parsed by the library – if a partial struct is now given to the ABI parsing engine, it will fail the parse if it cannot find all the fields to unpack data to. Thus, when the elections and reward contact receives the delegate event transaction hash and validates the event within Orbs, the parsing was being made to a struct of:
type Delegate struct {
Delegator [20]byte
To [20]byte
}
Instead of:
type Delegate struct {
Delegator [20]byte
To [20]byte
DelegationCounter *big.Int
}
This results in an error saying “delegationCounter’ field is missing.
The Orbs core team has introduced the following changes and fixes:
- Fixed the struct to properly unpack the ABI
- Wrote a test to check that the mirroring of the delegation event from Ethereum to Orbs Network works properly (the previous test wasn’t sufficiently “tight”).
- Adjusted the mirroring script to report the same error
The above fix is included in version 1.3.6 which was deployed on 17.12.2019. In addition, a fix to the calculated rewards was deployed, to ensure correct calculation.
As the network evolves, Guardians, Validators and the Orbs core team conduct checks to ensure that the behavior is correct and follows the spec. This is especially important for the rewards distribution process, which ensures the participants’ incentives and, thus, the security of the network.
Looking forward, the community is invited to develop an automated process to compare calculation results the control system and the actual – smart contract that manages the rewards.
The next reward distribution will happen at the end of December after election number 82, Ethereum block 9148900, more information can be found in Andrey’s post at https://www.orbs.com/getting-ready-for-round-iii-of-orbs-rewards-distribution/
