Filecoin Filecoin Virtual Machine - FVM, 7 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: FVM Foundry Update: Zondax AssemblyScript SDK Demo

Description

Zondax is one of FVM's awesome community fil-der teams working on building out important infrastructure to support the FVM.

Here they take us through a "Hello, World!" demo of the AssemblyScript SDK they are building for the Filecoin Virtual Machine, as well as show us some benchmarking against both the Rust SDK and TinyGo SDK implementations.

🌐 https://zondax.ch/

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About FVM Foundry:
FVM Foundry is a program for early-builders on the Filecoin Vitrual Machine.
We are working collaboratively with our amazing open source community in order to explore and build valuable use cases, infrastructure, tooling, and docs for the native FVM.
The aim is to collaborate, exchange knowledge and innovate together as well as gather feedback and input in order to build the best development experience possible on the FVM.

Want to help shape the future of FVM?
🏗️ FVM tooling & Infrastructure open grant RFPs: https://github.com/filecoin-project/devgrants/blob/master/rfps/fvm-open-tools-infra.md

✅ Follow & contribute to the design decisions being made on the FVM by subscribing to the
⭐ FVM-specs: https://github.com/filecoin-project/fvm-specs
⭐ FIP's: https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs

💬 Interested in joining a future Foundry Cohort? Let us know in the #fvm channel on the Filecoin Slack (visit filecoin.io to join the slack)

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About the FVM:

Currently Filecoin is known for being a decentralised storage and retrieval network, providing over 17 EiB of distributed data storage capacity to the world through thousands of Storage providers globally.

And we can think of this distributed storage network as being the layer zero of the Filecoin Architecture Network because ..
Storage is really only the start!

We want to be able to compute and analyse over and with the data on the Filecoin network!

And this is the goal of the FVM - to enable users to be able to deploy their own smart contracts (or actors as they are termed in the Filecoin ecosystem) and unlock the ability to perform on-chain computation over state data.

This additional layer of capability - which we can consider to be the layer 1 of the network - adds programmability to the already robust, permissionless storage network that is Filecoin.

Smart contracts + storage = FVM.

What will you build??

Links:
🌐 See more details on the website: https://fvm.filecoin.io
🦄 See the reference specification of FVM: https://github.com/filecoin-project/ref-fvm
👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Join the chat: #fvm on the Filecoin Slack Channel (visit filecoin.io to join)

A

Okay, so uh first I'm going to show you a hello world actor that has been written in assembly script. So this is a similar actor that we have seen from rust and go and I'm going to a little bit show you what uh zondax has been added to improve it. So, okay.

A

Okay, can you see the code now?

A

Yeah looks good okay, so uh so this is a say, hello, actor, um it's different from rusts. I don't know if you noticed, but there is no invoke function uh basically, because there is some part that it's um added after that is added at compile time, that is, uh to simplify the code, so we only have the constructor function in it and we have declarators.

A

So here it's defined, that is a constructor function and it's being called when the actor is being created in this function. We have a state, we just give it the default state and save it, so it will be saved in lotus in a file controller.

A

Then here we define a say hello function uh so same like in the rest. We also have this uh function. That is a method that is being called by method two, and this is what this line is, for. We basically um explicitly tell that it's going to be a exported method. That has the number invoke method number two and we have the parameters that are being passed to it so well here we don't have actually parameters for this function. So it's not being used, but is still there, so it can be used.

A

We load the states and we count. So we have a counter in the hello, hello, world contract, we increase it, we save it, and here we um we return a message which is hello world and the state like the counter.

A

um So so far so good. uh So we've I've been able to really really simplify uh the actor thanks to those decorators that we had before and add a lot of the complexity with the invoke function, etc.

A

um So here we have a state and same, we are trying to keep it minimal and so in it's it's an extension to the base state that we can find in the fvm sdk and the state we just defined the other counter, like account, which is a integer, and so now we can build it. If it's working.

A

Okay should be good, yeah, yeah, okay, um okay, so now it's generating from from the assembly index code. So the code that we just saw we are generating the wasp bit file and where is the wasp? Okay? So it's here, so we actually have two um whilst fire.

A

It's because I don't know if you remember, but we were like a bit um uh we have. We were having some issue with wasp is that in falcon you are not able to uh call any function before the invoke the famous input function, but in wasp it's supposed to be, uh it can happen, so you can have a specific, specific start function that is going to set up the memory and some stuff before so what we do. We have an intermediate phase that actually going to run it before and recompile into. Was another world smartphone?

A

That's why we have two wasps files and we only use the final one so, uh but this uh yeah people need to be aware of this, uh but it doesn't quite matter once you know how to do it um so yeah we have the.

A

uh We have a wasm file uh and should I okay, let's try to run it inside the devnet module, so it should be built.

A

So I'm going to copy past freshly imported a freshly created, wasp file, okay, connection lost, that's not great!.

A

A

Okay, so now we should be in ball to install uh chain style.

A

No, this is not this one.

A

A

Okay, we have it.

A

A

Okay, we create the actor now.

A

And it should be here so here we have the newly created actor and now, let's try to see and call uh invoked shane in book.

A

A

Okay- and here we have our message and if I've, if we decode this, it should be uh uh the message that we want. So let me try to find the symbolic order, just so to make sure uh basically for the color.

A

A

Okay and here so we have hello world one, so the counter has been uh updated. Let's see if we can do it again and see if it's keeping the state.

B

Can I add something there I mean what we are doing there is. We are using the decorators to recognize a key points or key parts of the smart contract and add all the file code related code for the smart contract to work in the state class.

B

We are adding all the important whole functionalities to serialize and deteriorate the the fields of that class to a stable structure, receiver away, and we are doing that by recognizing the fields that the user has has set on the state class and using the types and the default values to create the default value. The default class, the usual state for you to save, and then, when you run the load function, we we do all the the stuff to load those files from the receiver array to the state class.

B

So you can consume it from from this type. The same we are doing for those who decorators the constructor and the involved. We are taking the bulk function and the number you pass there to create the the invoke function.

B

The whole function with all the values, and if there is you, do you won't want to define any any explore method you can have only the constructor. If you don't want to have the constructor it will you don't need to define it because you don't want to save anything in the initial state, so you can use the export method.

B

um That's the imagine that that much is happening before compiling the code by another another package that we have created and that's something that assembly script allows us to do sorry for interruption.

A

Oh yeah, so yeah you're talking about uh yeah, so the generated file and then that they are after compiled into wasp. So there is an intermediate file that you generated with um with um more code, but using your decorators make it allow us to keep it simple and um okay. So now we have seen that uh hello, world actor works, the fvm, sdk actor svm sdk is working in complete, so we can generate wasp file and we also so with xontax.

A

We also had to uh create a cyborg library to encode a decode that is works with assembly script, and we were also interested in doing a benchmark actually to compare so then. What is interesting is to compare. What's the advantage with rust, the advantage with assembly script and go like to see the differences.

A

Are we doing worse or better, so we were able to benchmark.

A

So we were able to get the already uh write, an hello world contract and just create a small script that will uh compare the gas used and the file size, so it should be.

A

It will show in a second okay. It's a week long.

A

Okay running the benchmark, so he's compiling the go one and the rest one and it's crazy and we are using the local fpm to get the gas used. So we can see that the rest actor is when we call the cloud function is as the best number in term of gas.

A

Then we have the assembly script, and so we have different flavor of assembly. Script uh of the wasp compiled from a semi-script stub is the one without garbage collector, and we actually have the best uh second best uh gas used right. By that I mean it's using um a bit more gas than west, but less than the other and the go actor is actually using twice more than twice than the rust actor and in regarding the file size. It's actually the assembly discrete brand. That is a smaller dialogue to create the smallest file, size, actor.

A

B

That's amazing.

A

Yeah, okay, that's cool, and so we also made like a couple of more um uh contracts so to play with it and see if we actually have the cfdm sdk at the limit. So we add the esc20 actor right then, in a semi script, uh what it is.

A

Okay, that's here, so we have um all the method that you would find in the rc20 rc20 contract so get names, symbol, decimal, total supply, etc, etc. uh We can do build okay, you like do you want me to build and run it in devnet or do you trust me that it's working?

A

I don't know if it's interesting for you or not to see this.

B

Maybe what what we can compare lola there is if we have some some benchmarks, if we I don't know, if we were to do it.

A

I know we don't have the benchmark for lc20 actually.

B

That's something that we will do.

A

So yeah we don't, we don't have the benchmark for rc20 actor but um yeah. Basically, it's the same. We compile. We have the wasp and we can call invoke, but um I think I will pass on it. It's it's a bit to be a bit slow, taking a bit of time uh because yeah so another contract that we uh we're working on is also a falcon naming system.

A

Falcon naming system one uh so this one is simple, is custom is not matching anything that has been done in ethereum or whatever.

A

uh We have basically a register and a transfer, and um so that's also linked to a question and something that I want to show you that I asked yesterday for to the fvm team that we noticed that uh when you do resolve address, you will not. um If the address is not has never been used on on falcon, it will resolve to zero. So this is uh I'm going to demo something that is not working this time.

A

Oh again, so if we do make build.

B

And this makes for a great for a great feature, request.

A

Yeah, oh actually, we were we also like we are while developing it. We are thinking about what would be the best practice, because here we notice that if you use our sdk and not and are not careful enough, you are going to do something. That's actually going to lock you to you away from your lc20 token or falcon name.

A

So that's why I wanted to show you that maybe people have noticed something uh similar.

A

Let's see, oh that's not this.

A

Sorry, what's the name of the file.

A

A

uh And here, if I do.

A

Let's use chain and start.

A

A

Okay, it's working and let's do invoke uh forgot so here I'm going to register uh name but like I need to so it's method, two and I'm passing basically the parameter in base64 and yeah. I think it's on dax dot field that I'm registering so, but because it's me that is sending it it's going to register to my actor id caller id. So then, now, if I do lotus uh state get actor and I'm going to check the.

A

A

Okay, here we can see that so I have a counter. I've registered one name, it's not like field, it's registered to me and my actor id is 100., and now, let's do a transfer, so transfer is method free. Let me find this yeah somewhere.

A

Okay and if we do the same- and we look at it, so I've transferred it to so. What is in the parameter is actually the name of the file, so zondax file, zondax, dot, fill and freshly generated icons, so that has never been used before.

A

And here it has been registered to zero, so I actually cannot use this domain name ever again, so yeah. This is an issue that we found out and now the goal to improve. It's actually to improve the sdk to uh not allow developers to have things like this so make it bulletproof to bad practice and to um so also to improve.

A

uh How we encode and decode, because, like emma was saying earlier, is that cbo is only able to do it for a basic types, but we want to be able to do it also for custom types so like address. That would be nice, so it will generate automatically generate encoding and decoding, and we were also looking into having a javascript fvm local vm, but for testing so basically like you have in rust, but because we know that javascript developers or people who would be more inclined to use the assembly script doesn't really like rust.

A

So we would stick with a javascript like long wait and- and that's all.

A