Istanbul hard fork

Istanbul hard fork on Ethereum and Aztlan hard fork on Ethereum Classic.

This page has been moved to Consensus Paper. See Istanbul and Aztlan.

Istanbul feature upgrade contains the following specifications:

  • EIP-152: Add Blake2 compression function F precompile

  • EIP-1108: Reduce alt_bn128 precompile gas costs

  • EIP-1344: Add ChainID opcode

  • EIP-1884: Repricing for trie-size-dependent opcodes

  • EIP-2028: Calldata gas cost reduction

  • EIP-2200: Rebalance net-metered SSTORE gas cost with consideration of SLOAD gas cost change

Ethereum

The Ethereum upgrade applied the full Istanbul feature upgrade set. Several considerations were mentioned during this feature upgrade set review:

  • Consideration on Blake2 precompile parameters. It was under debate whether the round parameter would be useful, or would be following the hashing algorithm’s specification. It is later concluded that this may be useful for some applications, so leaving it there does no harm.

  • Consideration on EIP-1884 backward incompatibility. It is known that EIP-1884 will break some on-chain contracts. See its security review for more details.

Ethereum Classic

The Ethereum Classic upgrade is planning to apply the Istanbul feature upgrade set with EIP-1884 stripped, and it has a separate code-name called Aztlan (Yingchun).

Reviews

We gathered one review of consideration, and two categorized as design failure.

Trie access underprice

Consideration

It is known that the reason to apply EIP-1884 on Ethereum is to fix a potential vulnerability related to trie access underprice. The decision not to apply EIP-1884 on Ethereum Classic effectively leaves the vulnerability open. While we don’t disclose the exact method for the effective attack here in order to protect public interest, you can read this paper to learn about backgrounds of the attack.

Incompatibility with Ethereum

Design Failure

In Aztlan, interoperatibility with Ethereum is listed as one of the primary goal of this hard fork. Unfortunately, due to a design failure overlooked in the specification, it accomplishes the exact opposite.

This is primarily due to the new SELFBALANCE opcode included in EIP-1884. Aztlan stripped EIP-1884 due to backward compatibility reasons. However, by doing this, it also stripped SELFBALANCE. Not including this opcode means that any smart contracts compiled using Solidity or Vyper, using the Istanbul hard fork configuration, will not be able to function correctly on Ethereum Classic Aztlan. Those who wish to compile to Ethereum Classic must continue to use Constantinople or Byzantium hard fork configuration, and as a result, cannot take advantage of any Istanbul features.

Recommendation: Create a specification that applies SELFBALANCE opcode standalone, and add it to the hard fork specification list.

Inconsistency in net gas metering

Design Failure

Aztlan decided to include EIP-2200 for SSTORE net gas metering. However, it did not thoroughly consider the facts that EIP-2200 is designed with the full context of Istanbul hard fork, whose pre-conditions that Aztlan does not fulfill.

Net gas metering has a family of EIP specifications, including EIP-1283, EIP-1706 and EIP-2200. The specifications contain a parameter of "dirty gas", which is charged when a storage value has already been modified in the same transaction context. This value, as in the design intention, is expected to always equal to the value of SLOAD gas cost. In EIP-2200, this "dirty gas" is set to be 800, so as to accommodate EIP-1884’s gas cost change of SLOAD from 200 to 800. However, Aztlan does not include EIP-1884 but only applied EIP-2200, resulting in inconsistency in the EIP design intention, and may lead to unknown gas cost issues.

This has also led to confusions in implementations. For example, a contributor previously merged an incorrect version of Aztlan hard fork into Parity Ethereum. This, if left unspotted, will lead to consensus split on the whole Ethereum Classic network.

Recommendation: Remove EIP-2200 from the applied specification list, and add EIP-1283 with EIP-1706 instead.

Fixes

In this section, we provide several specifications to address currently known review issues.

Standalone SELFBALANCE

This section describes a specification, with identifier 50-SELFBALANCE. (Discuss)

This section provides a standalone specification for the SELFBALANCE opcode.

Specification

A new opcode, SELFBALANCE is introduced at 0x47.

  • SELFBALANCE pops 0 arguments off the stack,

  • SELFBALANCE pushes the balance of the current address to the stack,

  • SELFBALANCE is priced as GasFastStep, at 5 gas.

Aztlan fix

This section describes a specification, with identifier 49-AZTLANFIX. (Discuss)

This provides a specification as a "fix" to the current Aztlan hard fork. That is, it can be applied after Aztlan to fix the current problems.

Specification

After HARD_FORK_BLOCK, apply the following changes:

  • Disable EIP-2200, and enable EIP-1283 with EIP-1706.

  • Enable 50-SELFBALANCE.

Aztlan redo

This section describes a specification, with identifier 51-AZTLANREDO. (Discuss)

This provides a specification that "redo" Aztlan hard fork. This assumes that Aztlan will not go through, and a new specification will take its place.

Specification

After HARD_FORK_BLOCK, apply the following changes.