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    Approve multiple candidates with a single signature (#1191) · a84dd0db
    Alexandru Gheorghe authored
    Initial implementation for the plan discussed here: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/701
    Built on top of https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/1178
    v0: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot/pull/7554,
    
    ## Overall idea
    
    When approval-voting checks a candidate and is ready to advertise the
    approval, defer it in a per-relay chain block until we either have
    MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_COUNT candidates to sign or a candidate has stayed
    MAX_APPROVALS_COALESCE_TICKS in the queue, in both cases we sign what
    candidates we have available.
    
    This should allow us to reduce the number of approvals messages we have
    to create/send/verify. The parameters are configurable, so we should
    find some values that balance:
    
    - Security of the network: Delaying broadcasting of an approval
    shouldn't but the finality at risk and to make sure that never happens
    we won't delay sending a vote if we are past 2/3 from the no-show time.
    - Scalability of the network: MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_COUNT = 1 &
    MAX_APPROVALS_COALESCE_TICKS =0, is what we have now and we know from
    the measurements we did on versi, it bottlenecks
    approval-distribution/approval-voting when increase significantly the
    number of validators and parachains
    - Block storage: In case of disputes we have to import this votes on
    chain and that increase the necessary storage with
    MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_COUNT * CandidateHash per vote. Given that
    disputes are not the normal way of the network functioning and we will
    limit MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_COUNT in the single digits numbers, this
    should be good enough. Alternatively, we could try to create a better
    way to store this on-chain through indirection, if that's needed.
    
    ## Other fixes:
    - Fixed the fact that we were sending random assignments to
    non-validators, that was wrong because those won't do anything with it
    and they won't gossip it either because they do not have a grid topology
    set, so we would waste the random assignments.
    - Added metrics to be able to debug potential no-shows and
    mis-processing of approvals/assignments.
    
    ## TODO:
    - [x] Get feedback, that this is moving in the right direction. @ordian
    @sandreim @eskimor
    
     @burdges, let me know what you think.
    - [x] More and more testing.
    - [x]  Test in versi.
    - [x] Make MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_COUNT &
    MAX_APPROVAL_COALESCE_WAIT_MILLIS a parachain host configuration.
    - [x] Make sure the backwards compatibility works correctly
    - [x] Make sure this direction is compatible with other streams of work:
    https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/635 &
    https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/742
    - [x] Final versi burn-in before merging
    
    ---------
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAlexandru Gheorghe <[email protected]>
    a84dd0db