VM Interpreter - Message Invocation (Outside VM)

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• section-systems.filecoin_vm.interpreter

The VM interpreter orchestrates the execution of messages from a tipset on that tipset’s parent state, producing a new state and a sequence of message receipts. The CIDs of this new state and of the receipt collection are included in blocks from the subsequent epoch, which must agree about those CIDs in order to form a new tipset.

Every state change is driven by the execution of a message. The messages from all the blocks in a tipset must be executed in order to produce a next state. All messages from the first block are executed before those of second and subsequent blocks in the tipset. For each block, BLS-aggregated messages are executed first, then SECP signed messages.

Implicit messages

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• section-systems.filecoin_vm.interpreter.implicit-messages

In addition to the messages explicitly included in each block, a few state changes at each epoch are made by implicit messages. Implicit messages are not transmitted between nodes, but constructed by the interpreter at evaluation time.

For each block in a tipset, an implicit message:

• invokes the block producer’s miner actor to process the (already-validated) election PoSt submission, as the first message in the block;
• invokes the reward actor to pay the block reward to the miner’s owner account, as the final message in the block;

For each tipset, an implicit message:

• invokes the cron actor to process automated checks and payments, as the final message in the tipset.

All implicit messages are constructed with a From address being the distinguished system account actor. They specify a gas price of zero, but must be included in the computation. They must succeed (have an exit code of zero) in order for the new state to be computed. Receipts for implicit messages are not included in the receipt list; only explicit messages have an explicit receipt.

Gas payments

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In most cases, the sender of a message pays the miner which produced the block including that message a gas fee for its execution.

The gas payments for each message execution are paid to the miner owner account immediately after that message is executed. There are no encumbrances to either the block reward or gas fees earned: both may be spent immediately.

Duplicate messages

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• section-systems.filecoin_vm.interpreter.duplicate-messages

Since different miners produce blocks in the same epoch, multiple blocks in a single tipset may include the same message (identified by the same CID). When this happens, the message is processed only the first time it is encountered in the tipset’s canonical order. Subsequent instances of the message are ignored and do not result in any state mutation, produce a receipt, or pay gas to the block producer.

The sequence of executions for a tipset is thus summarised:

• pay reward for first block
• process election post for first block
• messages for first block (BLS before SECP)
• pay reward for second block
• process election post for second block
• messages for second block (BLS before SECP, skipping any already encountered)
• [... subsequent blocks ...]
• cron tick

Message validity and failure

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• section-systems.filecoin_vm.interpreter.message-validity-and-failure

Every message in a valid block can be processed and produce a receipt (note that block validity implies all messages are syntactically valid – see Message Syntax – and correctly signed). However, execution may or may not succeed, depending on the state to which the message is applied. If the execution of a message fails, the corresponding receipt will carry a non-zero exit code.

If a message fails due to a reason that can reasonably be attributed to the miner including a message that could never have succeeded in the parent state, or because the sender lacks funds to cover the maximum message cost, then the miner pays a penalty by burning the gas fee (rather than the sender paying fees to the block miner).

The only state changes resulting from a message failure are either:

• incrementing of the sending actor’s CallSeqNum, and payment of gas fees from the sender to the owner of the miner of the block including the message; or
• a penalty equivalent to the gas fee for the failed message, burnt by the miner (sender’s CallSeqNum unchanged).

A message execution will fail if, in the immediately preceding state:

• the From actor does not exist in the state (miner penalized),
• the From actor is not an account actor (miner penalized),
• the CallSeqNum of the message does not match the CallSeqNum of the From actor (miner penalized),
• the From actor does not have sufficient balance to cover the sum of the message Value plus the maximum gas cost, GasLimit * GasPrice (miner penalized),
• the To actor does not exist in state and the To address is not a pubkey-style address,
• the To actor exists (or is implicitly created as an account) but does not have a method corresponding to the non-zero MethodNum,
• deserialized Params is not an array of length matching the arity of the To actor’s MethodNum method,
• deserialized Params are not valid for the types specified by the To actor’s MethodNum method,
• the invoked method consumes more gas than the GasLimit allows,
• the invoked method exits with a non-zero code (via Runtime.Abort()), or
• any inner message sent by the receiver fails for any of the above reasons.

Note that if the To actor does not exist in state and the address is a valid H(pubkey) address, it will be created as an account actor.