This crate contains a Command Line Interface light client for Sui.
A light client allows checking the authenticity and validity of on-chain state, such as transactions, their effects including events and object contents, without the cost of running a full node.
Running a full node requires downloading the full sequence of all transaction and re-executing them. Then the full state of the blockchain is available locally to serve reads. This is however an expensive process in terms of network bandwidth needed to download the full sequence of transactions, as well as CPU to re-execute it, and storage to store the full state of the blockchain.
Alternatively, a light client only needs to download minimal information to authenticate blockchain state. Specifically in Sui, the light client needs to sync all end-of-epoch checkpoints that contain information about the committee in the next epoch. Sync involves downloading the checkpoints and checking their validity by checking their certificate.
Once all end-of-epoch checkpoints are downloaded and checked, any event or current object can be checked for its validity. To do that the light client downloads the checkpoint in which the transaction was executed, and the effects structure that summarizes its effects on the system, including events emitted and objects created. The chain of validity from the checkpoint to the effects and its contents is checked via the certificate on the checkpoint and the hashes of all structures.
A light client can ensure the correctness of the event and object data using the techniques defined above. However, the light client CLI utility also needs to pretty-print the structures in JSON, which requires knowledge of the correct type for each event or object. Types themselves are defined in modules that have been uploaded by past transactions. Therefore to ensure correct display the light client authenticates that all modules needed to display sought items are also correct.
The light client requires a config file and a directory to cache checkpoints, and then can be used to check the validity of transaction and their events or of objects.
The config file for the light client takes a URL for a full node, a directory (that must exist) and within the directory to name of the genesis blob for the Sui network.
full_node_url: "http://ord-mnt-rpcbig-06.mainnet.sui.io:9000"
checkpoint_summary_dir: "checkpoints_dir"
genesis_filename: "genesis.blob"
The genesis blob for the Sui mainnet can be found here: https://github.com/MystenLabs/sui-genesis/blob/main/mainnet/genesis.blob
Every day there is a need to download new checkpoints through sync by doing:
$ sui-light-client --config light_client.yaml sync
Where light_client.yaml is the config file above.
This command will download all end-of-epoch checkpoints, and check them for validity. They will be cached within the checkpoint summary directory for use by future invocations.
To check a transaction was executed, as well as the events it emitted do:
$ sui-light-client --config light_client.yaml transaction -t 8RiKBwuAbtu8zNCtz8SrcfHyEUzto6zi6cMVA9t4WhWk
Where the base58 encoding of the transaction ID is specified. If the transaction has been executed the transaction ID the effects digest are displayed and all the events are printed in JSON. If not an error is printed.
To check an object provide its ID in the following way:
$ sui-light-client --config light_client.yaml object -o 0xc646887891adfc0540ec271fd0203603fb4c841a119ec1e00c469441
abfc7078
The object ID is represented in Hex as displayed in explorers. If the object exists in the latest state it is printed out in JSON, otherwise an error is printed.