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Heimdall’s bor module is responsible for managing span intervals and coordinating interactions with the Bor chain. Specifically, it determines when a new span can be proposed on Heimdall based on the current block number and the current span.

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Preliminary terminology

  • A side-transaction is a normal heimdall transaction but the data with which the message is composed needs to be voted on by the validators since the data is obscure to the consensus protocol itself, and it has no way of validating the data’s correctness.
  • A sprint comprises of 16 bor blocks (configured in bor).
  • A span comprises 400 sprints in bor (check heimdall’s bor params endpoint).

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Overview

The validators on the bor chain produce blocks in sprints and spans. Hence, it is imperative for the protocol to formalize the validators who will be producers in a range of blocks (span). The bor module in heimdall facilitates this by pseudo-randomly selecting validators who will producing blocks (producers) from the current validator set. The bor chain fetches and persists this information before the next span begins. bor module is a crucial component in heimdall since the PoS chain “liveness” depends on it.

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How it works

A Span is defined by the data structure: 
message Span {
	uint64 id = 1 [ (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
	uint64 start_block = 2 [ (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
	uint64 end_block = 3 [ (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
	heimdallv2.stake.ValidatorSet validator_set = 4
	[ (gogoproto.nullable) = false, (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
	repeated heimdallv2.stake.Validator selected_producers = 5
	[ (gogoproto.nullable) = false, (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
	string bor_chain_id = 6 [ (amino.dont_omitempty) = true ];
}
where
  • id means the id of the span, calculated by monotonically incrementing the id of the previous span.
  • start_block corresponds to the block in bor from which the given span would begin.
  • end_block corresponds to the block in bor at which the given span would conclude.
  • validator_set defines the set of active validators.
  • selected_producers are the validators selected to produce blocks in bor from the validator set.
  • bor_chain_id corresponds to bor chain ID.
A validator on heimdall can construct a span proposal message: 
message MsgProposeSpan {
	option (amino.name) = "heimdallv2/bor/MsgProposeSpan";
	option (cosmos.msg.v1.signer) = "proposer";
	uint64 span_id = 1;
	string proposer = 2 [ (cosmos_proto.scalar) = "cosmos.AddressString" ];
	uint64 start_block = 3;
	uint64 end_block = 4;
	string chain_id = 5;
	bytes seed = 6;
	string seed_author = 7 [ (cosmos_proto.scalar) = "cosmos.AddressString" ];
}
The message is generally constructed and broadcast by the validator’s bridge process periodically, but the CLI can also be used to do the same manually (see below). Upon broadcasting the message, it is initially checked by ProposeSpan handler for basic sanity (verify whether the proposed span is in continuity, appropriate span duration, correct chain ID, etc.). Since this is a side-transaction, the validators then vote on the data present in MsgProposeSpan on the basis of its correctness. All these checks are done in SideHandleMsgSpan (verifying seed, span continuity, etc.) and if correct, the validator would vote YES. Finally, if there are 2/3+ YES votes, the PostHandleMsgSpan persists the proposed span in the state via the keeper : 
// freeze for new span
err = s.k.FreezeSet(ctx, msg.SpanId, msg.StartBlock, msg.EndBlock, msg.ChainId, common.Hash(msg.Seed))
	if err != nil {
	logger.Error("unable to freeze validator set for span", "span id", msg.SpanId, "error", err)
	return err
}
FreezeSet internally invokes SelectNextProducers, which pseudo-randomly picks producers from the validator set, leaning more towards validators with higher voting power based on stake: 
// select next producers
newProducers, err := k.SelectNextProducers(ctx, seed, prevVals)
if err != nil {
	return err
}
and then initializes and stores the span: 
// generate new span
newSpan := &types.Span{
	Id:                id,
	StartBlock:        startBlock,
	EndBlock:          endBlock,
	ValidatorSet:      valSet,
	SelectedProducers: newProducers,
	BorChainId:        borChainID,
}

logger.Info("Freezing new span", "id", id, "span", newSpan)

return k.AddNewSpan(ctx, newSpan)

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Proposing a span manually

A validator can use the CLI to propose a span: 
heimdalld tx bor propose-span --proposer <VALIDATOR_ADDRESS> --start-block <BOR_START_BLOCK> --span-id <SPAN_ID> --bor-chain-id <BOR_CHAIN_ID>

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Query commands

One can run the following query commands from the bor module:
  • span - Query the span corresponding to the given span id.
  • span-list - Fetch span list.
  • latest-span - Query the latest span.
  • next-span-seed - Query the seed for the next span.
  • next-span - Query the next span.
  • params - Fetch the parameters associated with the bor module.

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CLI commands

heimdalld query bor span-by-id <SPAN_ID>

heimdalld query bor span-list

heimdalld query bor latest-span

heimdalld query bor next-span-seed [id]

heimdalld query bor next-span

heimdalld query bor params

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GRPC Endpoints

The endpoints and the params are defined in the bor/query.proto file. Please refer to them for more information about the optional params. 
grpcurl -plaintext -d '{}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetSpanList

grpcurl -plaintext -d '{}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetLatestSpan

grpcurl -plaintext -d '{"id": <>}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetNextSpanSeed

grpcurl -plaintext -d '{"span_id": <>, "start_block": <>, "bor_chain_id": "<>"}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetNextSpan

grpcurl -plaintext -d '{"id": "<>"}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetSpanById


grpcurl -plaintext -d '{}' localhost:9090 heimdallv2.bor.Query/GetBorParams

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REST endpoints

The endpoints and the params are defined in the bor/query.proto file. Please refer to them for more information about the optional params. 
curl localhost:1317/bor/spans/list

curl localhost:1317/bor/spans/latest

curl localhost:1317/bor/spans/seed/<SPAN_ID>

curl "localhost:1317/bor/spans/prepare?span_id=<SPAN_ID>&start_block=<BOR_START_BLOCK>&bor_chain_id=<BOR_CHAIN_ID>"

curl localhost:1317/bor/spans/<SPAN_ID>

curl localhost:1317/bor/params