One to watch out for supermajority of 5 is 4 so lose 2 nodes and you are gone. With 7 it’s 5.
We have a regain majority issue being worked on @qi_ma is writing that up, well after some testnet bug fixes and moving the ElderInfo and SectionInfo to a single SectionAuthorityProvider struct (mostly done). So we can be more risky with lost consensus then, but still risky.
On can we trust Adults to be good Elders. There are 2 points to consider
They have been well behaved for longer than any other Adults (node age)
Elders will use less storage (possibly) than Adults, but potentially do more work (consensus, client handling etc.)
If an Elder is not good enough to even get consensus or make agreements he is removed at the time of section creation (DKG will remove him as not good enough).
Elders must be contactable by any node (Adults not so much).
Means any node can be an Adult (even those who fail igd or can’t get connections back to them, thi sis good news). So rather than Elders being the eldest 7 section members, they will be the 7 oldest connectable section members.
I think it might self terminate, it looks like we have lost some data. I am not sure it’s lost though, but not being returned consistently.
If we did that at once it would likely destabilise the network a lot. Remember though we only started the first section (14) the community are supplying all resources beyond that. So 14 is not a huge amount. I don’t know right now total node numbers, but we should get better stats next time.
Elders lists are the same as yesterday for “00” and “01”. Elder list is varying for “11”. But “10” cannot be connected by a client. If I had time to display the network as stars in the sky, I would represent it as a black hole.
EDIT: to be clearer, this means that any account with a public key beginning with 8, 9, A or B cannot connect to the network.
I suspect this is what is happening there (it’s first on our action list anyway).
Some Adults are on the network and these are not connectable, i.e. cannot be connected to. They are community nodes behind a NAT that was not traversed by igd or otherwise (there is a chance we have a bug ignoring the igd address). So Ok as Adults but useless as Elders, but as they were connected to Elders they passed DKG (Elder selection and verify process) to become Elders.
The bottom line of that, if it’s the case, is that section 10 will now stagnate and die. It is now in a weird state where it may get data (from other sections that have members still connected) but won’t get any new nodes joining, so cannot split. So that would be a dead part of the network and probably contains parts of files as well as keys/accounts etc.
Good snooping @tfa If this is the case it confirms point 1 of our action plan should be point 1 Not a huge fix but one we must make never the less. I have linked your findings to our internal discourse. Thanks chap.
Wouldn’t you still have super majority rules that work with 5 lose 2? Of the 3 elders that remain wouldn’t you still have the ability to get a 2/3 supermajority consensus.
When this all is appitized and we hit official launch that noobs and normies can understand THEN maybe I’ll start celebrating. This is more like smoothies and chicken than smashing champaign over the proverbial bow.
Is there a file browser to go with all the stuff you can upload? Is the SAFE browser still a thing or did that get updated into non existence or something? I’m kind of losing track of these things. How do we make websites on the SAFE network these days?
Okay I don’t know if this is my fault or not but I just tried listing the files in my safe (there’s nothing in there so I didn’t expect it to lag) and it just hung there, like it was caught in a loop. So i used the syntax: safe files ls. And it just hung there and so I ended up cancelling the command.
I’ve been reading the documentation believe me. The node is set up and connected fine. But I tried putting a simple text file to the network and it’s complaining I have no safecoins. So I’m confused.
My thought may be lame.
But why network needs direct connection to elders?
Can’t it send messages to a node, which is connected to elder?
Do not know how crypto is implemented here, but theoretically it should be possible to be sure that such message is not tampered by relay node (if you have public keys for that elder).
Public IPs are not universally public anymore.
Because of censors, who randomly break Internet.
So it may happen that user will be able to connect to only single IP of the section.
Kinda, so it works like this. When we lose nodes we reset the group via a process of agreement of the new group from the supermajority of the remaining group. So we can lose a node then agree the group is now 4 and then lose another etc.
The problem is loosing nodes before resetting the group. So 5 loose 2 leaves 3 and 3 is less that >2/3 of 5. How fast we react to lost nodes or how fast we promote a node makes a difference.
So when I say lose 2 nodes I really should say lose 2 nodes in an instant.
B great to get your logs, just to see what wakey stuff did happen and if AE would indeed fix it (I suspect we need connectivity challenges to recover this one). @lionel.faber@qi_ma and @yogesh would get value from them too.
Not a huge fix but one we must make never the less. I have linked your findings to our internal discourse. Thanks chap.