Basic Overview

ShardEval is a sharding-based blockchain simulator. It can be used to simulate protocols for the sharding-based Blockchain systems. ShardEval is built on the top of BlockEval.

Following is a brief representation of the simulator workflow for sharded systems:

Setup

cd ShardEval
pip install -r requirements.txt
bash setup.sh

Usage

The command-line interface for the doc-phi can be used as:

 __ _                   _   __            _ 
/ _\ |__   __ _ _ __ __| | /__\_   ____ _| |
\ \| '_ \ / _` | '__/ _` |/_\ \ \ / / _` | |
_\ \ | | | (_| | | | (_| //__  \ V / (_| | |
\__/_| |_|\__,_|_|  \__,_\__/   \_/ \__,_|_|

Usage: shard-eval [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  analyze-log           Analyze the generated log files
  batch-run-simulation  Initiate simulations in batches
  execute-simulator     execute simulator completely
  run-simulation        Initiate a simulation
  summarize-logs        Summarize the generated log files
  visualize-file        visualize the generated log files

A more elaborate explanation is as follows:

1. Running Simulation

The simulation can be executed by:

shard-eval run-simulation

The simulation executes as per the parameters specified in the config/params.json file. The result of the simulation are the log files which are stored accordingly in the folder simulation_logs.

Note: To generate detailed logs, set verbose to 1 in the params.json file.

2. Running Simulation in Batch

The simulation can be executed in batch by using following command:

shard-eval batch-run-simulation

The script.py file needs to be changed accordingly to generate the logs as per the required parameters.

3. Analyzing the logs

The generated log files can be analyzed by:

shard-eval analyze-log --log_file=<log_file>

Upon execution, several files (html, txt, csv, png) will be created in respective folders inside the logs_data which will contain a detailed analysis of the log file.

4. Summarizing the logs (in batch)

To create a summary of the logs, following command can be used:

shard-eval summarize-logs --log_dir=<logs_directory>

A single csv file containing the summary of all the logs will be generated.

5. Visualizing the summary of the logs

After creating the summary, the csv file can be visualized using:

shard-eval visualize-file --summary_file=<summary_file>

Several plots will be created inside the suitable directories under the logs_data directory.

6. End-to-end execution of the simulator

To execute the simulator completely and perform all the steps in an instant, following command can be useful:

shard-eval execute-simulator

Sample log file

...
693.1657 : Node FN3 received a Final-block - B_FN11_31a7db44-ca47-4899-b078-82601fee8aeb from FN8
693.1657 : Node FN3 propagated Block B_FN11_31a7db44-ca47-4899-b078-82601fee8aeb to its neighbours ['FN8']
693.1665 : Node FN8 received a Final-block - B_FN11_31a7db44-ca47-4899-b078-82601fee8aeb from FN3
693.2447 : T_FN8_68c3437f-f6e3-4486-8d05-6ae26bf017f2 added to tx-pool of ['FN14']
...
719.8211 : T_FN12_a929b89a-3cf6-4707-af03-00b35500f8d4 added to tx-pool of ['FN10']
719.8211 : T_FN12_a929b89a-3cf6-4707-af03-00b35500f8d4 accepted by FN10
719.8226 : Node FN13 (Leader) received voted Cross-shard-block CB_FN10_0f76c779-d5f1-426d-b5c3-ca7adf928aa7 but it didn't originate in its own shard
719.8226 : Node FN13 propagated Voted-Cross-shard-block CB_FN10_0f76c779-d5f1-426d-b5c3-ca7adf928aa7 to its neighbours ['FN10']
719.8226 : Node FN13 received a Tx-block - TB_FN13_2077c41a-97a7-445f-be37-629ba6297036 from FN1
...

============  SIMULATION DETAILS  ============

Number of nodes = 15
Number of shards = 3
Fraction of cross-shard tx = 0.2
Simulation Time = 0.2716028690338135 seconds

Length of Blockchain = 8
Total no of transactions included in Blockchain = 132
Total no of intra-shard transactions included in Blockchain = 82
Total no of cross-shard transactions included in Blockchain = 50

Total no of transactions processed = 440
Total no of intra-shard transactions processed = 370
Total no of cross-shard transactions processed = 70

Total no of transactions generated = 525
Total no of intra-shard transactions generated = 412
Total no of cross-shard transactions generated = 113

Processed TPS = 0.22
Accepted TPS = 0.066