This is the first PR in preparation for
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/454.

## Follow ups:
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3904.
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3905.

Overall changes are documented here (lot more visual 😍):
https://hackmd.io/@ak0n/454-np-governance

[Maybe followup](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4217)
with migration of storage item `VirtualStakers` as a bool or enum in
`Ledger`.

## Context
We want to achieve a way for a user (`Delegator`) to delegate their
funds to another account (`Agent`). Delegate implies the funds are
locked in delegator account itself. Agent can act on behalf of delegator
to stake directly on Staking pallet.

The delegation feature is added to Staking via another pallet
`delegated-staking` worked on
[here](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3904).

## Introduces:
### StakingUnchecked Trait
As the name implies, this trait allows unchecked (non-locked) mutation
of staking ledger. These apis are only meant to be used by other pallets
in the runtime and should not be exposed directly to user code path.
Also related: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3888.

### Virtual Bond
Allows other pallets to stake via staking pallet while managing the
locks on these accounts themselves. Introduces another storage
`VirtualStakers` that whitelist these accounts.

We also restrict virtual stakers to set reward account as themselves.
Since the account has no locks, we cannot support compounding of
rewards. Conservatively, we require them to set a separate account
different from the staker. Since these are code managed, it should be
easy for another pallet to redistribute reward and rebond them.

### Slashes
Since there is no actual lock maintained by staking-pallet for virtual
stakers, this pallet does not apply any slashes. It is then important
for pallets managing virtual stakers to listen to slashing events and
apply necessary slashes.

follow up of https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/2604
closes https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/2604

- [x] take relevant changes from Marcin's PR 
- [x] extract common duplicate code for workers (low-hanging fruits)

~Some unpassed ci problems are more general and should be fixed in
master (see https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/4074)~

Proposed labels: **T0-node**, **R0-silent**, **I4-refactor**

-----

kusama address: FZXVQLqLbFV2otNXs6BMnNch54CFJ1idpWwjMb3Z8fTLQC6

---------

Co-authored-by: s0me0ne-unkn0wn <[email protected]>

This PR stabilizes the txBroadcast API to version 1.

Needs from spec:
- https://github.com/paritytech/json-rpc-interface-spec/pull/153 
- https://github.com/paritytech/json-rpc-interface-spec/pull/154


cc @paritytech/subxt-team

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>

This PR stabilizes the txBroadcast API to version 1.

Ideally needs:
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/4050
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3772

cc @paritytech/subxt-team

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>

Some Rococo parachains lacked WS nodes. `ws/wss` endpoints are necessary
for using light clients on the testnet.

Changes:
1. Add `ws/wss` endpoints to all testnet parachains.
2. Remove decommissioned nodes (`people-collator-node-2`
`people-collator-node-3` ).

Related to https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4126
discussion

Currently all preparations have same priority and this is not ideal in
all cases. This change should improve the finality time in the context
of on-demand parachains and when `ExecutorParams` are updated on-chain
and a rebuild of all artifacts is required. The desired effect is to
speed up approval and dispute PVF executions which require preparation
and delay backing executions which require preparation.

---------

Signed-off-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>

- Returned latency (with it, results are more stable)
- The threshold is weakened
- Increased number of runs

This PR limits the number of active calls to the transactionBroadcast
APIs to 16.

cc @paritytech/subxt-team 

Closes: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3081

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: James Wilson <[email protected]>

This PR stabilizes the chainHead API to version 1.

Needs:
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3667

cc @paritytech/subxt-team

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>

This PR ensures that broadcast future cleans-up the submitted extrinsic
from the pool, iff the `broadcast_stop` operation has been called.

This effectively cleans-up transactions from the pool when the
`broadcast_stop` is called.

cc @paritytech/subxt-team

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>

approval-voting: Make sure we always mark approved candidates approved in a different relay chain context (#4153)

... see for more detail why this is needed

https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4149#issuecomment-2058472444

## TODO:
- [x] Unittests
- [x] Replicate scenario from
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4149 and confirm this
fixes it: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4149 [
Replicated on a zombienet with some hacked nodes, that we can end up in
this state where no-wake is schedule and the nodes are pending new
assignments]

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Gheorghe <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>

The `next_retry_time` gets populated when a request receives an error
timeout or any other error, after thatn next_retry would check all
requests in the queue returns the smallest one, which then gets used to
move the main loop by creating a Delay
```
futures_timer::Delay::new(instant.saturating_duration_since(Instant::now())).await,
```

However when we retry a task for the first time we still keep it in the
queue an mark it as in flight so its next_retry_time would be the oldest
and it would be small than `now`, so the Delay will always triggers, so
that would make the main loop essentially busy wait untill we received a
response for the retry request.

Fix this by excluding the tasks that are already in-flight.

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Gheorghe <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>

More details can be found
[here](https://github.com/paritytech/ci_cd/issues/939#issuecomment-2064061845)

Block reversion of the current block is technically possible as can be
seen from

https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/blob/39b1f50f/polkadot/runtime/parachains/src/disputes.rs#L1215-L1223

- [x] Fix the test

close https://github.com/paritytech/ci_cd/issues/974

This PR adds description to each of the sections of the Changelog part.
Changes are based on feedback that it wasn't that clear what exactly
`Node Dev`, `Runtime Dev` etc. means. Now, the description for each of
those parts is taken directly from the `prdoc` schema.
Closes https://github.com/paritytech/release-engineering/issues/197

cc https://github.com/paritytech/ci_cd/issues/974

---------

Co-authored-by: command-bot <>
Co-authored-by: Bastian Köcher <[email protected]>

PR adds `test-linux-stable-int` and `quick-benchmarks` as github action
jobs. It's a copy of `test-linux-stable-int` and `quick-benchmarks` from
gitlab ci and now it's needed to make a stress test for self-hosted
github runners. `test-linux-stable-int` and `quick-benchmarks` in gitlab
are still `Required` whereas this workflow is allowed to fail.

cc https://github.com/paritytech/infrastructure/issues/46

# Description
- Link to issue: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3651

polkadot address: 19nSqFQorfF2HxD3oBzWM3oCh4SaCRKWt1yvmgaPYGCo71J

Introduce `touch` call designed to address operational prerequisites
before providing liquidity to a pool.

This function ensures that essential requirements, such as the presence
of the pool's accounts, are fulfilled. It is particularly beneficial in
scenarios where a pool creator removes the pool's accounts without
providing liquidity.

---------

Co-authored-by: command-bot <>

- Moved `substrate/frame/contracts/src/tests/builder.rs` into a pub
test_utils module, so we can use that in the
`pallet-contracts-mock-network` tests
- Refactor xcm tests to use XCM builders, and simplify the use case for
xcm-send

Preparation for https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3935

Changes:
- Add some `default-features = false` for the case that a crate and that
dependency both support nostd builds.
- Shuffle files around of some benchmarking-only crates. These
conditionally disabled the `cfg_attr` for nostd and pulled in libstd.
Example [here](https://github.com/ggwpez/zepter/pull/95). The actual
logic is moved into a `inner.rs` to preserve nostd capability of the
crate in case the benchmarking feature is disabled.
- Add some `use sp_std::vec` where needed.
- Remove some `optional = true` in cases where it was not optional.
- Removed one superfluous `cfg_attr(not(feature = "std"), no_std..`.

All in all this should be logical no-op.

---------

Signed-off-by: Oliver Tale-Yazdi <[email protected]>

This PR ensures that the reported pruned blocks are unique.

While at it, ensure that the best block event is properly generated when
the last best block is a fork that will be pruned in the future.

To achieve this, the chainHead keeps a LRU set of reported pruned blocks
to ensure the following are not reported twice:

```bash
	 finalized -> block 1 -> block 2 -> block 3
	
	                      -> block 2 -> block 4 -> block 5
	
	           -> block 1 -> block 2_f -> block 6 -> block 7 -> block 8
```

When block 7 is finalized the branch [block 2; block 3] is reported as
pruned.
When block 8 is finalized the branch [block 2; block 4; block 5] should
be reported as pruned, however block 2 was already reported as pruned at
the previous step.

This is a side-effect of the pruned blocks being reported at level N -
1. For example, if all pruned forks would be reported with the first
encounter (when block 6 is finalized we know that block 3 and block 5
are stale), we would not need the LRU cache.

cc @paritytech/subxt-team  

Closes https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3658

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Sebastian Kunert <[email protected]>

Improve doc:

* the pallet macro is actually referring to 2 places, for the module and
for the struct placeholder but doesn't really clarify it (I should have
named the latter just `pallet_struct` or something but it is a bit late)

* The doc of `with_default` is a bit confusing too IMO.

CC @Kianenigma



---------

Co-authored-by: Liam Aharon <[email protected]>

Introduce `PalletId` as an additional seed parameter for pool's account
id derivation.

The PR also introduces the `pallet_asset_conversion_ops` pallet with a
call to migrate a given pool to thew new account. Additionally
`fungibles::lifetime::ResetTeam` and `fungible::lifetime::Refund`
traits, to facilitate the migration of pools.

---------

Co-authored-by: command-bot <>

This PR introduces changes enabling the transfer of coretime regions via
XCM.

TL;DR: There are two primary issues that are resolved in this PR:

1. The `mint` and `burn` functions were not implemented for coretime
regions. These operations are essential for moving assets to and from
the XCM holding register.
2. The transfer of non-fungible assets through XCM was previously
disallowed. This was due to incorrectly benchmarking non-fungible asset
transfers via XCM, which led to assigning it a weight of `Weight::Max`,
effectively preventing its execution.

### `mint_into` and `burn` implementation

This PR addresses the issue with cross-chain transferring regions back
to the Coretime chain. Remote reserve transfers are performed by
withdrawing and depositing the asset to and from the holding registry.
This requires the asset to support burning and minting functionality.

This PR adds burning and minting; however, they work a bit differently
than usual so that the associated region record is not lost when
burning. Instead of removing all the data, burning will set the owner of
the region to `None`, and when minting it back, it will set it to an
actual value. So, when cross-chain transferring, withdrawing into the
registry will remove the region from its original owner, and when
depositing it from the registry, it will set its owner to another
account

This was originally implemented in this PR: #3455, however we decided to
move all of it to this single PR
(https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3455#discussion_r1547324892)

### Fixes made in this PR

- Update the `XcmReserveTransferFilter` on coretime chain since it is
meant as a reserve chain for coretime regions.
- Update the XCM benchmark to use `AssetTransactor` instead of assuming
`pallet-balances` for fungible transfers.
- Update the XCM benchmark to properly measure weight consumption for
nonfungible reserve asset transfers. ATM reserve transfers via the
extrinsic do not work since the weight for it is set to `Weight::max()`.

Closes: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/865

---------

Co-authored-by: Branislav Kontur <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Francisco Aguirre <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Dónal Murray <[email protected]>

This PR adjusts `xcm-bridge-hub-router` to be usable in the chain of
routers when a `NotApplicable` error occurs.

Closes: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4133

## TODO

- [ ] backport to polkadot-sdk 1.10.0 crates.io release

This PR sends the GrandpaNeighbor packet to lightclients similarly to
the full-nodes.

Previously, the lightclient would receive a GrandpaNeigbor packet only
when the note set changed.

Related to: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/4120

Next steps:
-  [ ] check with lightclient

---------

Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <[email protected]>

Add verify statement to ensure that benchmarks call do not revert

Also updated
[benchmarks](https://weights.tasty.limo/compare?unit=time&ignore_errors=true&threshold=10&method=asymptotic&repo=polkadot-sdk&old=master&new=pg/verify-benchmarks&path_pattern=substrate%2Fframe%2Fcontracts%2Fsrc%2Fweights.rs)

---------

Co-authored-by: command-bot <>

Introduce types to define 1:1 balance conversion for different relative
asset ids/locations of native asset.

Examples:
native asset on Asset Hub presented as `VersionedLocatableAsset` type in
the context of Relay Chain is
```
{
  `location`: (0, Parachain(1000)),
  `asset_id`: (1, Here),
}
```
and it's balance should be converted 1:1 by implementations of
`ConversionToAssetBalance` trait.

---------

Co-authored-by: Branislav Kontur <[email protected]>

Updating the prdoc doc file to be a bit more useful for new contributors
and adding a SemVer section.

---------

Signed-off-by: Oliver Tale-Yazdi <[email protected]>

Followup after https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3431
Per
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63188674/github-actions-detect-author-association
and https://michaelheap.com/github-actions-check-permission/
looks like just checking NOT a MEMBER is not correct, Not a CONTRIBUTORs
check should be included

Follow up to #3431

Added an api check to verify that there are pre-existing approvals in
the PR before dismissing reviews and posting a message

Changes:
- Saturate in the input validation of he drop history function or
pallet-broker.

---------

Signed-off-by: Oliver Tale-Yazdi <[email protected]>

Will make https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/4035 easier to
review (the mentioned PR already does this move so the diff will be
clearer).

Also called out as part of:
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/3233#discussion_r1490867383