Status
SeqVM
is considered ALPHA software and is not safe to use in
production. The framework is under active development and may change
significantly over the coming months as its modules are optimized and
audited.
Features
Shared Sequencer
The SeqVM
is built from the ground up with the shared sequencer built directly into the chain
enabling decentralization from the start. This enable users to easily send messages from rollups like NodeKit chain to the shared sequencer. The contents of SequencerMSG
is just ChainId|Data|FromAddress
where the data is the transaction data
from the rollup translated into a byte[].
Arbitrary Token Minting
The SeqVM
also has the ability to create, mint, and transfer user-generated
tokens with ease. When creating an asset, the owner is given "admin control" of
the asset functions and can later mint more of an asset, update its metadata
(during a reveal for example), or transfer/revoke ownership (if rotating their
key or turning over to their community).
Assets are a native feature of the SeqVM
and the storage engine is
optimized specifically to support their efficient usage (each balance entry
requires only 72 bytes of state = assetID|publicKey=>balance(uint64)
). This
storage format makes it possible to parallelize the execution of any transfers
that don't touch the same accounts. This parallelism will take effect as soon
as it is re-added upstream by the hypersdk
(no action required in the
SeqVM
).
Avalanche Warp Support
We plan to take advantage of the Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM) support provided by the
hypersdk
to enable any SeqVM
to receive messages from our NodeKit Hub
subnet without
relying on a trusted relayer or bridge (just the validators of the SeqVM
and NodeKit Hub
sending the message). This feature is still in-progress and we will be sharing more details in
the upcoming months.
Demos
The first step to running these demos is to launch your own SeqVM
Subnet. You
can do so by running the following command from this location (may take a few
minutes):
./scripts/run.sh;
By default, this allocates all funds on the network to
token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp
. The private
key for this address is
0x323b1d8f4eed5f0da9da93071b034f2dce9d2d22692c172f3cb252a64ddfafd01b057de320297c29ad0c1f589ea216869cf1938d88c9fbd70d6748323dbf2fa7
.
For convenience, this key has is also stored at demo.pk
.
If you don't need 2 Subnets for your testing, you can run MODE="run-single" ./scripts/run.sh
.
To make it easy to interact with the SeqVM
, we implemented the token-cli
.
Next, you'll need to build this. You can use the following command from this location
to do so:
./scripts/build.sh
This command will put the compiled CLI in ./build/token-cli
.
Lastly, you'll need to add the chains you created and the default key to the
token-cli
. You can use the following commands from this location to do so:
./build/token-cli key import demo.pk
./build/token-cli chain import-anr
chain import-anr
connects to the Avalanche Network Runner server running in
the background and pulls the URIs of all nodes tracking each chain you
created.
Mint and Trade
Step 1: Create Your Asset
First up, let's create our own asset. You can do so by running the following
command from this location:
./build/token-cli action create-asset
When you are done, the output should look something like this:
database: .token-cli
address: token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp
chainID: Em2pZtHr7rDCzii43an2bBi1M2mTFyLN33QP1Xfjy7BcWtaH9
metadata (can be changed later): MarioCoin
continue (y/n): y
✅ txID: 27grFs9vE2YP9kwLM5hQJGLDvqEY9ii71zzdoRHNGC4Appavug
txID
is the assetID
of your new asset.
The "loaded address" here is the address of the default private key (demo.pk
). We
use this key to authenticate all interactions with the SeqVM
.
Step 2: Mint Your Asset
After we've created our own asset, we can now mint some of it. You can do so by
running the following command from this location:
./build/token-cli action mint-asset
When you are done, the output should look something like this (usually easiest
just to mint to yourself).
database: .token-cli
address: token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp
chainID: Em2pZtHr7rDCzii43an2bBi1M2mTFyLN33QP1Xfjy7BcWtaH9
assetID: 27grFs9vE2YP9kwLM5hQJGLDvqEY9ii71zzdoRHNGC4Appavug
metadata: MarioCoin supply: 0
recipient: token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp
amount: 10000
continue (y/n): y
✅ txID: X1E5CVFgFFgniFyWcj5wweGg66TyzjK2bMWWTzFwJcwFYkF72
Step 3: View Your Balance
Now, let's check that the mint worked right by checking our balance. You can do
so by running the following command from this location:
./build/token-cli key balance
When you are done, the output should look something like this:
database: .token-cli
address: token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp
chainID: Em2pZtHr7rDCzii43an2bBi1M2mTFyLN33QP1Xfjy7BcWtaH9
assetID (use TKN for native token): 27grFs9vE2YP9kwLM5hQJGLDvqEY9ii71zzdoRHNGC4Appavug
metadata: MarioCoin supply: 10000 warp: false
balance: 10000 27grFs9vE2YP9kwLM5hQJGLDvqEY9ii71zzdoRHNGC4Appavug
Bonus: Watch Activity in Real-Time
To provide a better sense of what is actually happening on-chain, the
token-cli
comes bundled with a simple explorer that logs all blocks/txs that
occur on-chain. You can run this utility by running the following command from
this location:
./build/token-cli chain watch
If you run it correctly, you'll see the following input (will run until the
network shuts down or you exit):
database: .token-cli
available chains: 2 excluded: []
0) chainID: Em2pZtHr7rDCzii43an2bBi1M2mTFyLN33QP1Xfjy7BcWtaH9
1) chainID: cKVefMmNPSKmLoshR15Fzxmx52Y5yUSPqWiJsNFUg1WgNQVMX
select chainID: 0
watching for new blocks on Em2pZtHr7rDCzii43an2bBi1M2mTFyLN33QP1Xfjy7BcWtaH9 👀
height:13 txs:1 units:488 root:2po1n8rqdpNuwpMGndqC2hjt6Xa3cUDsjEpm7D6u9kJRFEPmdL avg TPS:0.026082
✅ KwHcsy3TXcnDyoMNmpMYC4EUvXPDPCoTK8YaEigG7nWwwdi1n actor: token1rvzhmceq997zntgvravfagsks6w0ryud3rylh4cdvayry0dl97nsjzf3yp units: 496 summary (*actions.SequencerMsg): [data: ]
Running a Load Test
Before running this demo, make sure to stop the network you started using
killall avalanche-network-runner
.
The SeqVM
load test will provision 5 SeqVMs
and process 500k transfers
on each between 10k different accounts.
./scripts/tests.load.sh
This test SOLELY tests the speed of the SeqVM
. It does not include any
network delay or consensus overhead. It just tests the underlying performance
of the hypersdk
and the storage engine used (in this case MerkleDB on top of
Pebble).
Measuring Disk Speed
This test is extremely sensitive to disk performance. When reporting any TPS
results, please include the output of:
./scripts/tests.disk.sh
Run this test RARELY. It writes/reads many GBs from your disk and can fry an
SSD if you run it too often. We run this in CI to standardize the result of all
load tests.
Zipkin Tracing
To trace the performance of SeqVM
during load testing, we use OpenTelemetry + Zipkin
.
To get started, startup the Zipkin
backend and ElasticSearch
database (inside hypersdk/trace
):
docker-compose -f trace/zipkin.yml up
Once Zipkin
is running, you can visit it at http://localhost:9411
.
Next, startup the load tester (it will automatically send traces to Zipkin
):
TRACE=true ./scripts/tests.load.sh
When you are done, you can tear everything down by running the following
command:
docker-compose -f trace/zipkin.yml down
Deploying to a Devnet
In the world of Avalanche, we refer to short-lived, test Subnets as Devnets.
To programaticaly deploy SeqVM
to a distributed cluster of nodes running on
your own custom network or on Fuji, check out this doc.
Future Work
If you want to take the lead on any of these items, please
start a discussion or reach
out on the NodeKit Discord.