monero/tests
moneromooo-monero 2899379791
daemon, wallet: new pay for RPC use system
Daemons intended for public use can be set up to require payment
in the form of hashes in exchange for RPC service. This enables
public daemons to receive payment for their work over a large
number of calls. This system behaves similarly to a pool, so
payment takes the form of valid blocks every so often, yielding
a large one off payment, rather than constant micropayments.

This system can also be used by third parties as a "paywall"
layer, where users of a service can pay for use by mining Monero
to the service provider's address. An example of this for web
site access is Primo, a Monero mining based website "paywall":
https://github.com/selene-kovri/primo

This has some advantages:
 - incentive to run a node providing RPC services, thereby promoting the availability of third party nodes for those who can't run their own
 - incentive to run your own node instead of using a third party's, thereby promoting decentralization
 - decentralized: payment is done between a client and server, with no third party needed
 - private: since the system is "pay as you go", you don't need to identify yourself to claim a long lived balance
 - no payment occurs on the blockchain, so there is no extra transactional load
 - one may mine with a beefy server, and use those credits from a phone, by reusing the client ID (at the cost of some privacy)
 - no barrier to entry: anyone may run a RPC node, and your expected revenue depends on how much work you do
 - Sybil resistant: if you run 1000 idle RPC nodes, you don't magically get more revenue
 - no large credit balance maintained on servers, so they have no incentive to exit scam
 - you can use any/many node(s), since there's little cost in switching servers
 - market based prices: competition between servers to lower costs
 - incentive for a distributed third party node system: if some public nodes are overused/slow, traffic can move to others
 - increases network security
 - helps counteract mining pools' share of the network hash rate
 - zero incentive for a payer to "double spend" since a reorg does not give any money back to the miner

And some disadvantages:
 - low power clients will have difficulty mining (but one can optionally mine in advance and/or with a faster machine)
 - payment is "random", so a server might go a long time without a block before getting one
 - a public node's overall expected payment may be small

Public nodes are expected to compete to find a suitable level for
cost of service.

The daemon can be set up this way to require payment for RPC services:

  monerod --rpc-payment-address 4xxxxxx \
    --rpc-payment-credits 250 --rpc-payment-difficulty 1000

These values are an example only.

The --rpc-payment-difficulty switch selects how hard each "share" should
be, similar to a mining pool. The higher the difficulty, the fewer
shares a client will find.
The --rpc-payment-credits switch selects how many credits are awarded
for each share a client finds.
Considering both options, clients will be awarded credits/difficulty
credits for every hash they calculate. For example, in the command line
above, 0.25 credits per hash. A client mining at 100 H/s will therefore
get an average of 25 credits per second.
For reference, in the current implementation, a credit is enough to
sync 20 blocks, so a 100 H/s client that's just starting to use Monero
and uses this daemon will be able to sync 500 blocks per second.

The wallet can be set to automatically mine if connected to a daemon
which requires payment for RPC usage. It will try to keep a balance
of 50000 credits, stopping mining when it's at this level, and starting
again as credits are spent. With the example above, a new client will
mine this much credits in about half an hour, and this target is enough
to sync 500000 blocks (currently about a third of the monero blockchain).

There are three new settings in the wallet:

 - credits-target: this is the amount of credits a wallet will try to
reach before stopping mining. The default of 0 means 50000 credits.

 - auto-mine-for-rpc-payment-threshold: this controls the minimum
credit rate which the wallet considers worth mining for. If the
daemon credits less than this ratio, the wallet will consider mining
to be not worth it. In the example above, the rate is 0.25

 - persistent-rpc-client-id: if set, this allows the wallet to reuse
a client id across runs. This means a public node can tell a wallet
that's connecting is the same as one that connected previously, but
allows a wallet to keep their credit balance from one run to the
other. Since the wallet only mines to keep a small credit balance,
this is not normally worth doing. However, someone may want to mine
on a fast server, and use that credit balance on a low power device
such as a phone. If left unset, a new client ID is generated at
each wallet start, for privacy reasons.

To mine and use a credit balance on two different devices, you can
use the --rpc-client-secret-key switch. A wallet's client secret key
can be found using the new rpc_payments command in the wallet.
Note: anyone knowing your RPC client secret key is able to use your
credit balance.

The wallet has a few new commands too:

 - start_mining_for_rpc: start mining to acquire more credits,
regardless of the auto mining settings
 - stop_mining_for_rpc: stop mining to acquire more credits
 - rpc_payments: display information about current credits with
the currently selected daemon

The node has an extra command:

 - rpc_payments: display information about clients and their
balances

The node will forget about any balance for clients which have
been inactive for 6 months. Balances carry over on node restart.
2019-10-25 09:34:38 +00:00
..
block_weight Merge pull request #5414 2019-04-16 22:37:02 +02:00
core_proxy Merge pull request #5915 2019-10-08 15:55:03 -05:00
core_tests Merge pull request #5915 2019-10-08 15:55:03 -05:00
crypto Merge pull request #5240 2019-03-19 09:48:16 +02:00
daemon_tests Update 2019 copyright 2019-03-05 22:05:34 +01:00
data wallet2: only export necessary outputs and key images 2018-11-04 22:27:01 +00:00
difficulty Merge pull request #5621 2019-07-24 14:36:43 -05:00
functional_tests daemon, wallet: new pay for RPC use system 2019-10-25 09:34:38 +00:00
fuzz Add ref-counted buffer byte_slice. Currently used for sending TCP data. 2019-07-16 16:30:35 +00:00
gtest Made code block usage consistent across all .md files 2019-05-12 05:16:26 +01:00
hash tests: add a few try/catch in main to shut coverity up 2019-04-03 16:24:09 +00:00
libwallet_api_tests tests: add a few try/catch in main to shut coverity up 2019-04-03 16:24:09 +00:00
net_load_tests Update 2019 copyright 2019-03-05 22:05:34 +01:00
performance_tests Merge pull request #5893 2019-09-30 18:43:48 -05:00
trezor Merge pull request #5409 2019-04-16 22:34:30 +02:00
unit_tests Merge pull request #5972 2019-10-22 10:52:14 -05:00
CMakeLists.txt build: debug and test builds via contrib 2019-04-10 15:43:52 +02:00
cryptolib.pl Update 2019 copyright 2019-03-05 22:05:34 +01:00
cryptotest.pl Update 2019 copyright 2019-03-05 22:05:34 +01:00
hash-target.cpp fix wide difficulty conversion with some versions of boost 2019-05-01 19:58:09 +00:00
io.h Update 2019 copyright 2019-03-05 22:05:34 +01:00
README.md Made code block usage consistent across all .md files 2019-05-12 05:16:26 +01:00

Running all tests

To run all tests, run:

cd /path/to/monero
make [-jn] debug-test # where n is number of compiler processes

To test a release build, replace debug-test with release-test in the previous command.

Core tests

Core tests take longer than any other Monero tests, due to the high amount of computational work involved in validating core components.

Tests are located in tests/core_tests/, and follow a straightforward naming convention. Most cases cover core functionality (block_reward.cpp, chaingen.cpp, rct.cpp, etc.), while some cover basic security tests (double_spend.cpp & integer_overflow.cpp).

To run only Monero's core tests (after building):

cd build/debug/tests/core_tests
ctest

To run the same tests on a release build, replace debug with release.

Crypto Tests

Crypto tests are located under the tests/crypto directory.

  • crypto-tests.h contains test harness headers
  • main.cpp implements the driver for the crypto tests

Tests correspond to components under src/crypto/. A quick comparison reveals the pattern, and new tests should continue the naming convention.

To run only Monero's crypto tests (after building):

cd build/debug/tests/crypto
ctest

To run the same tests on a release build, replace debug with release.

Daemon tests

[TODO]

Functional tests

[TODO] Functional tests are located under the tests/functional directory.

First, run a regtest daemon in the offline mode and with a fixed difficulty:

monerod --regtest --offline --fixed-difficulty 1

Alternatively, you can run multiple daemons and let them connect with each other by using --add-exclusive-node. In this case, make sure that the same fixed difficulty is given to all the daemons.

Next, restore a mainnet wallet with the following seed and restore height 0 (the file path doesn't matter):

velvet lymph giddy number token physics poetry unquoted nibs useful sabotage limits benches lifestyle eden nitrogen anvil fewest avoid batch vials washing fences goat unquoted

Open the wallet file with monero-wallet-rpc with RPC port 18083. Finally, start tests by invoking ./blockchain.py or ./speed.py

Fuzz tests

Fuzz tests are written using American Fuzzy Lop (AFL), and located under the tests/fuzz directory.

An additional helper utility is provided contrib/fuzz_testing/fuzz.sh. AFL must be installed, and some additional setup may be necessary for the script to run properly.

Hash tests

Hash tests exist under tests/hash, and include a set of target hashes in text files.

To run only Monero's hash tests (after building):

cd build/debug/tests/hash
ctest

To run the same tests on a release build, replace debug with release.

Libwallet API tests

[TODO]

Net Load tests

[TODO]

Performance tests

Performance tests are located in tests/performance_tests, and test features for performance metrics on the host machine.

To run only Monero's performance tests (after building):

cd build/debug/tests/performance_tests
./performance_tests

The path may be build/Linux/master/debug (adapt as necessary for your platform).

If the performance_tests binary does not exist, try running make in the build/debug/tests/performance_tests directory.

To run the same tests on a release build, replace debug with release.

Unit tests

Unit tests are defined under the tests/unit_tests directory. Independent components are tested individually to ensure they work properly on their own.

To run only Monero's unit tests (after building):

cd build/debug/tests/unit_tests
ctest

To run the same tests on a release build, replace debug with release.

Writing new tests

Test hygiene

When writing new tests, please implement all functions in .cpp or .c files, and only put function headers in .h files. This will help keep the fairly complex test suites somewhat sane going forward.

Writing fuzz tests

[TODO]