Initial Proposal: Cronos v1.3 Network Upgrade

[lezzokafka]

Authors and Credit

Cronos Team and Community

Status

DRAFT

Proposal

Dear community members,

We are pleased to propose the scheduled v1.3 upgrade to the Cronos mainnet. After the last upgrade of v1.2, the Cronos EVM development team has implemented numerous improvements and enhanced the Cronos EVM binary. In this proposal, we will delve into the key updates and enhancements introduced in v1.3 of the Cronos EVM chain.

The tentative upgrade block height is set to 14920000 which is expected around

7AM GMT on 18th of July, 2024 (3PM HKT/SGT)

This proposes a breaking network upgrade for the Cronos EVM Chain Mainnet cronosmainnet_25-1. This implies that validators and full nodes must upgrade their cronosd binary from the current version v1.2.* to the latest v1.3 binary at block height 14920000, the block countdown timer can be found here.

What is this upgrade about?

The Cronos v1.3 upgrade focuses on:

1. Bumping Cosmovisor version, improving its usage during upgrade
   Cosmovisor is a widely used tool for node hosts to manage network upgrades automatically. As such, we have upgraded the Cosmovisor in our integration tests to v1.5.0. This update replaces the outdated version and introduces support for graceful shutdowns in tests, thus paving the way for smoother upgrades of Cronos EVM in the future.

2. Improving RocksDB’s integrity in operation by backward compatible of WAL format
   The implemented solution involves flushing the VersionDB WAL before the node shuts down. This maintains the integrity of the database, ensuring a more reliable and smoother restart and upgrade operation for all the node hosts using RocksDB.

3. Improving the node's stability by preventing system crashes caused by invalid input parameters
   An improvement was made to fix an issue that could cause a potential crash in the RPC module due to invalid elasticity_multiplier inputs. Additionally, the upgrade process in integration tests was updated to support newer versions, enhancing sequence handling to minimize disruptions.

4. Introducing E2EE key mapping
   This new feature enables users to link their e2ee key pairs with their address, which enhances security practices and supports future applications and operations.

5. Providing backward RPC support to the parsed logs from old events
   This fix resolves an issue with parsing logs from old events in the RPC module, which enhances data reliability by ensuring the system can accurately parse logs from older events.

Other updates and improvements includes:

• Bug fixes and refactoring efforts improved security and stability, such as
  • Fixing nil pointer errors when querying blocks before the Feemarket module was enabled;
  • Adding back default prepare proposal logic to check block size and gas limits.
• Updating Cometbft and cosmos-sdk version to v0.37 and v0.47 respectively.

For more details on the changes, you can visit the release page.

Testing

The proposed upgrades and changes have been tested on both internal testnets and the Cronos testnet (currently at v1.3.0-rc2) to ensure the achievement of expected outcomes.

Action required

Node hosts must apply the new v1.3 binary at the upgrade height; otherwise, the node will stop operating.

DO NOT upgrade your node before the upgrade block height, as the new binary is incompatible before the upgrade height.