Solid transaction fee mechanism

[robert-zaremba]

Summary

We identified problems with current fee mechanism. More specifically, it's susceptible for spam attack, state bloating or even DOS attacks.

This is a meta issue to list verticals related to solve the main concerns. General discussion about protocol fees: #8224

Gas prices and zero fee problem

• Decide about short coming solution for zero fee problem. This has to be enforced by a state logic or consensus.
  • Discussions in In Protocol Gas Price | Fee #8224
• Implement a short coming solution for zero fee problem
• Decide about long term strategy and dynamic fee mechanims
• ADR for the fee mechanism
• Implement dynamic fee mechanism

Related:

• Ante Handler Min Fee Unit Tests Ante Handler Min Fee Unit Tests #3100
• Add gas and fees concepts doc Add gas and fees concepts doc #3115
• Add provision to support free transactions Add provision to support free transactions #3193
• Solve fee discovery for wallet users Solve fee discovery for wallet users #7347

Gas

Gas charges = how much gas is consumed by a particular operation / message.
Some operations may be underpriced. There are many attack vectors which attack runtime execution or storage bloat. Good example of that are Ethereum Shanghai attacks.

• Audit gas consumption by messages
• Simulations and fuzzy testing with memory allocation and cpu benchmarks.
• Adjust operation gas fees
• Storage gas fees.
  • Storage deposits -> reference: Spam prevention regen-network/regen-ledger#255 (comment)
  • Storage cost adjustments
• IAVL Gas pricing IAVL Gas pricing #2860
• Charge extra gas when doing serialization and deserialization #10681

Related:

• Double-check our gas prices Double-check our gas prices #1008

Multi Denom Gas Price

For IBC transactions, it may be extremely useful if the protocols could accept payments for gas fee with different currencies.

• RFC for the multi denom gas payments
  • multi-coin deposits, AMM mechanism for currency exchange or simply accept payments in other currencies...
• ADR for the multi denom gas payments
• Implement mutli denom gas payments

Check Transaction fees and spam prevention

• Attacking CheckTx Prevent Spam Txs #4695 and Preventing 0 fee Tx spamming - Consensus Min Fee #4527

A block proposer may not obey CheckTx and spam block with invalid transactions. Such kind of events could pollute a state without much cost. This can be prevented by adding additional fees or some slashable evidence.

• Slash block proposer polluting the state Slash block proposer polluting the state #8192

[tac0turtle]

Diving into the fee issue, I dont think the problem is what lives in the sdk, but more so, how to use modular antehandlers and different fee designs is not documented. Looking at the antehandler, in order to write my own fee system I only have to write up to 3 functions. If we were to document how to write custom antehandlers and what different things do, people would be able to write their own systems.

[ethanfrey]

Diving into the fee issue, I dont think the problem is what lives in the sdk, but more so, how to use modular antehandlers and different fee designs is not documented. Looking at the antehandler, in order to write my own fee system I only have to write up to 3 functions. If we were to document how to write custom antehandlers and what different things do, people would be able to write their own systems.

I agree with this. And a simple but usage example will inspire chains to take that and customize as needed. That will scratch lots of itches until a more powerful EIP-1559 solution can be implemented (and give some real world feedback on attack vectors, usability, etc)

[robert-zaremba]

Well, I still think it will be worth to add a reference implementation for the min gas price. I didn't look at the code how the min gas price is set, but probably it goes through sdk.Context.

[alexanderbez]

I have no idea what this issue is proposing...seems like a hodge-podge of random things related to gas and fees...

[robert-zaremba]

This is a meta issue, collecting fee & gas related tasks and ideas. meta-issue label was originally here.

[alexanderbez]

Create a discussion please @robert-zaremba -- let's keep issues to concrete proposals.

[robert-zaremba]

Create a discussion please @robert-zaremba -- let's keep issues to concrete proposals.

The issue is old. That was the way how we were aggregating epics back in time.
This is not really a discussion.