# Global State¶

## Introduction¶

The “global state” is the storage layer for the blockchain. All accounts, contracts, and any associated data they have are stored in the global state. Our global state has the semantics of a key-value store (with additional permissions logic, since not all users can access all values in the same way). Each block causes changes to this global state because of the execution of the deploys it contains. In order for validators to efficiently judge the correctness of these changes, information about the new state needs to be communicated succinctly. Moreover, we need to be able to communicate pieces of the global state to users, while allowing them to verify the correctness of the parts they receive. For these reasons, the key-value store is implemented as a Merkle trie.

In this chapter we describe what constitutes a “key”, what constitutes a “value”, the permissions model for the keys, and the Merkle trie structure.

## Keys¶

A key in the global state is one of the following four data types:

• 32-byte account identifier (called an “account identity key”)

• 32-byte immutable contract identifier (called a “hash key”)

• 32-byte reference identifier (called an “unforgable reference”)

We cover each of these key types in more detail in the sections that follow.

### Account identity key¶

This key type is used specifically for accounts in the global state. All accounts in the system must be stored under an account identity key, and no other type. The 32-byte identifier which represents this key is derived from the blake2b256 hash of the public key used to create the associated account (see Accounts for more information).

### Hash key¶

This key type is used for storing contracts immutably. Once a contract is written under a hash key, that contract can never change. The 32-byte identifier representing this key is derived from the blake2b256 hash of the deploy hash (see Block Structure for more information) concatenated with a 4-byte sequential ID. The ID begins at zero for each deploy and increments by 1 each time a contract is stored. The purpose of this ID is to allow each contract stored in the same deploy to have a unique key.

### Unforgable Reference (URef)¶

This key type is used for storing any type of value except Account. Additionally, URefs used in contracts carry permission information with them to prevent unauthorized usage of the value stored under the key. This permission information is tracked by the runtime, meaning that if a malicious contract attempts to produce a URef with permissions that contract does not actually have, we say the contract has attempted to “forge” the unforgable reference, and the runtime will raise a forged URef error. Permissions for a URef can be given across contract calls, allowing data stored under a URef to be shared in a controlled way. The 32-byte identifier representing the key is generated randomly by the runtime (see Execution Semantics for for more information).

## Values¶

A value stored in the global state is a StoredValue. A StoredValue is one of three possible variants:

• A CLValue

• A contract

• An account

We discuss CLValue and contract in more detail below, details about accounts can be found in Accounts.

Each StoredValue is serialized when written to the global state. The serialization format consists of a single byte tag, indicating which variant of StoredValue it is, followed by the serialization of that variant. The tag for each variant is as follows:

• CLValue is 0

• Account is 1

• Contract is 2

The details of CLType serialization is in the following section. Using the serialization format for CLValue as a basis, we can succinctly write the serialization rules for contracts and accounts:

• contracts serialize in the same way as data with CLType equal to Tuple3(List(U8), Map(String, Key), Tuple3(U32, U32, U32));

• accounts serialize in the same way as data with CLType equal to Tuple5(FixedList(U8, 32), Map(String, Key), URef, Map(FixedList(U8, 32), U8), Tuple2(U8, U8)).

Note: Tuple5 is not a presently supported CLType, however it is clear how to generalize the rules for Tuple1, Tuple2, Tuple3 to any size tuple.

Note: links to further serialization examples and a reference implementation are found in Appendix B.

### CLValue¶

CLValue is used to describe data that is used by smart contracts. This could be as a local state variable, input argument or return value. A CLValue consists of two parts: a CLType describing the type of the value, and an array of bytes which represent the data in our serialization format.

CLType is described by the following recursive data type:

enum CLType {
Bool, // boolean primitive
I32, // signed 32-bit integer primitive
I64, // signed 64-bit integer primitive
U8, // unsigned 8-bit integer primitive
U32, // unsigned 32-bit integer primitive
U64, // unsigned 64-bit integer primitive
U128, // unsigned 128-bit integer primitive
U256, // unsigned 256-bit integer primitive
U512, // unsigned 512-bit integer primitive
Unit, // singleton value without additional semantics
String, // e.g. "Hello, World!"
URef, // unforgable reference (see above)
Key, // global state key (see above)
Option(CLType), // optional value of the given type
List(CLType), // list of values of the given type (e.g. Vec in rust)
FixedList(CLType, u32), // same as List above, but number of elements
// is statically known (e.g. arrays in rust)
Result(CLType, CLType), // co-product of the the given types;
// one variant meaning success, the other failure
Map(CLType, CLType), // key-value association where keys and values have the given types
Tuple1(CLType), // single value of the given type
Tuple2(CLType, CLType), // pair consisting of elements of the given types
Tuple3(CLType, CLType, CLType), // triple consisting of elements of the given types
Any // Indicates the type is not known
}


All data which can be assigned a (non-Any) CLType can be serialized according to the following rules (this defines the CasperLabs serialization format):

• Boolean values serialize as a single byte; true maps to 1, while false maps to 0.

• Numeric values consisting of 64 bits or less serialize in the two’s complement representation with little-endian byte order, and the appropriate number of bytes for the bit-width.

• E.g. 7u8 serializes as 0x07

• E.g. 7u32 serializes as 0x07000000

• E.g. 1024u32 serializes as 0x00040000

• Wider numeric values (i.e. U128, U256, U512) serialize as: one byte given the length of the subsequent number (in bytes), followed by the two’s complement representation with little-endian byte order. The number of bytes should be chosen as small as possible to represent the given number. This is done to reduce the size of the serialization in the case of small numbers represented within a wide data type.

• E.g. U512::from(7) serializes as 0x0107

• E.g. U512::from(1024) serializes as 0x020004

• E.g. U512::from("123456789101112131415") serializes as 0x0957ff1ada959f4eb106

• Unit serializes to an empty byte array.

• Strings serialize as a 32-bit integer representing the length in bytes (note: this might be different than the number of characters since special characters, such as emojis, take more than one byte), followed by the UTF-8 encoding of the characters in the string.

• E.g. "Hello, World!" serializes as 0x0d00000048656c6c6f2c20576f726c6421

• Optional values serialize with a single byte tag, followed by the serialization of the value it self. The tag is equal to 0 if the value is missing, and 1 if it is present.

• E.g. None serializes as 0x00

• E.g. Some(10u32) serializes as 0x010a000000

• A list of values serializes as a 32-bit integer representing the number of elements in the list (note this differs from strings where it gives the number of bytes), followed by the concatenation of each serialized element.

• E.g. List() serializes as 0x00000000

• E.g. List(1u32, 2u32, 3u32) serializes as 0x03000000010000000200000003000000

• A fixed-length list of values serializes as simply the concatenation of the serialized elements. Unlike a variable-length list, the length is not included in the serialization because it is statically known by the type of the value.

• E.g. [1u32, 2u32, 3u32] serializes as 0x010000000200000003000000

• A Result serializes as a single byte tag followed by the serialization of the contained value. The tag is equal to 1 for the success variant and 0 for the error variant.

• E.g. Ok(314u64) serializes as 0x013a01000000000000

• E.g. Err("Uh oh") serializes as 0x00050000005568206f68

• Tuples serialize as the concatenation of their serialized elements. Similar to FixedList the number of elements is not included in the serialization because it is statically known in the type.

• E.g. (1u32, "Hello, World!", true) serializes as 0x010000000d00000048656c6c6f2c20576f726c642101

• A Map serializes as a list of key-value tuples. There must be a well-defined ordering on the keys, and in the serialization the pairs are listed in ascending order. This is done to ensure determinism in the serialization, as Map data structures can be unordered.

• URef values serialize as the concatenation of its address (which is a fixed-length list of u8) and a single byte tag representing the access rights. Access rights are converted as follows:

Access Rights

Serialization

NONE

0

READ

1

WRITE

2

READ_WRITE

3

ADD

4

READ_ADD

5

ADD_WRITE

6

READ_ADD_WRITE

7

• Key values serialize as a single byte tag representing the variant, followed by the serialization of the data that variant contains. For most variants this is simply a fixed-length 32 byte array. The exception is Key::URef which contains a URef, so its data serializes per the description above. The tags are as follows: Key::Account serializes as 0, Key::Hash as 1, Key::URef as 2.

CLType itself also has rules for serialization. A CLType serializes as a single byte tag, followed by the concatenation of serialized inner types, if any (e.g. lists, and tuples have inner types). FixedList is a minor exception because it also includes the length in the type, however this simply means that the length included in the serialization as well (as a 32-bit integer, per the serialization rules above), following the serialization of the inner type. The tags are as follows:

CLType

Serialization Tag

Bool

0

I32

1

I64

2

U8

3

U32

4

U64

5

U128

6

U256

7

U512

8

Unit

9

String

10

URef

11

Key

12

Option

13

List

14

FixedList

15

Result

16

Map

17

Tuple1

18

Tuple2

19

Tuple3

20

Any

21

A complete CLValue, including both the data and the type can also be serialized (in order to store it in the global state). This is done by concatenating: the serialization of the length (as a 32-bit integer) of the serialized data (in bytes), the serialized data itself, and the serialization of the type.

### Contracts¶

Contracts are a special value type because they contain the on-chain logic of the applications running on the CasperLabs system. A contract contains the following data:

• a collection of named keys

• a protocol version

The wasm module must contain a function named call which takes no arguments and returns no values. This is the main entry point into the contract. Moreover, the module may import any of the functions supported by the CasperLabs runtime; a list of all supported functions can be found in Appendix A.

Note: though the call function signature has no arguments and no return value, within the call function body the get_named_arg runtime function can be used to accept arguments (by ordinal) and the ret runtime function can be used to return a single CLValue to the caller.

The named keys are used to give human-readable names to keys in the global state which are important to the contract. For example, the hash key of another contract it frequently calls may be stored under a meaningful name. It is also used to store the URefs which are known to the contract (see below section on Permissions for details).

The protocol version says which version of the CasperLabs protocol this contract was compiled to be compatible with. Contracts which are not compatible with the active major protocol version will not be executed by any node in the CasperLabs network.

## Permissions¶

There are three types of actions which can be done on a value: read, write, add. The reason for add to be called out separately from write is to allow for commutativity checking. The available actions depends on the key type and the context. This is summarized in the table below:

Key Type

Available Actions

Account

Read + Add if the context is the current account otherwise None

Hash

URef

See note below

Local

Read + Write + Add if the context seed used to construct the key matches the current context

### Permissions for URefs¶

In the runtime, a URef carries its own permissions called AccessRights. Additionally, the runtime tracks what AccessRights would be valid for each URef to have in each context. As mentioned above, if a malicious contract attempts to use a URef with AccessRights that are not valid in its context, then the runtime will raise an error; this is what enforces the security properties of all keys. By default, in all contexts, all URefs are invalid (both with any AccessRights, or no AccessRights); however, a URef can be added to a context in the following ways:

• it can exist in a set of “known” URefs

• it can be freshly created by the runtime via the new_uref function

• for called contracts, it can be passed in by the caller via the arguments to call_contract

• it can be returned back to the caller from call_contract via the ret function

Note: that only valid URefs may be added to the known URefs or cross call boundaries; this means the system cannot be tricked into accepted a forged URef by getting it through a contract or stashing it in the known URefs.

The ability to pass URefs between contexts via call_contract / ret, allows them to be used to share state among a fixed number of parties, while keeping it private from all others.

## Merkle trie structure¶

At a high level, a Merkle trie is a key-value store data structure which is able to be shared piece-wise in a verifiable way (via a construction called a Merkle proof). Each node is labelled by the hash of its data; for leaf nodes —that is the data stored in that part of the tree, for other node types — that is the data which references other nodes in the trie. Our implementation of the trie has radix of 256, this means each branch node can have up to 256 children. This is convenient because it means a path through the tree can be described as an array of bytes, and thus serialization directly links a key with a path through the tree to its associated value.

Formally, a trie node is one of the following:

• a leaf, which includes a key and a value

• a branch, which has up to 256 blake2b256 hashes, pointing to up to 256 other nodes in the trie (recall each node is labelled by its hash)

• an extension node, which includes a byte array (called the affix) and a blake2b256 hash pointing to another node in the trie

The purpose of the extension node is to allow path compression. For example, if all keys for values in the trie used the same first four bytes, then it would be inefficient to need to traverse through four branch nodes where there is only one choice, and instead the root node of the trie could be an extension node with affix equal to those first four bytes and pointer to the first non-trivial branch node.

The rust implementation of our trie can be found on GitHub:

Note: that conceptually, each block has its own trie because the state changes based on the deploys it contains. For this reason, our implementation has a notion of a TrieStore which allows us to look up the root node for each trie.