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Native Programs

Velas contains a small handful of native programs, which are required to run validator nodes. Unlike third-party programs, the native programs are part of the validator implementation and can be upgraded as part of cluster upgrades. Upgrades may occur to add features, fix bugs, or improve performance. Interface changes to individual instructions should rarely, if ever, occur. Instead, when change is needed, new instructions are added and previous ones are marked deprecated. Apps can upgrade on their own timeline without concern of breakages across upgrades.

For each native program the program id and description each supported instruction is provided. A transaction can mix and match instructions from different programs, as well include instructions from on-chain programs.

System Program​

Create new accounts, allocate account data, assign accounts to owning programs, transfer lamports from System Program owned accounts and pay transacation fees.

Program id: 11111111111111111111111111111111

Instructions: SystemInstruction

Config Program​

Add configuration data to the chain and the list of public keys that are permitted to modify it

Program id: Config1111111111111111111111111111111111111 Instructions: config_instruction Unlike the other programs, the Config program does not define any individual instructions. It has just one implicit instruction, a "store" instruction. Its instruction data is a set of keys that gate access to the account, and the data to store in it.

Stake Program​

Create and manage accounts representing stake and rewards for delegations to validators.

Program id: Stake11111111111111111111111111111111111111

Instructions: StakeInstruction

Vote Program​

Create and manage accounts that track validator voting state and rewards.

Program id: Vote111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Instructions: VoteInstruction

BPF Loader​

Deploys, upgrades, and executes programs on the chain.

Program id: BPFLoaderUpgradeab1e11111111111111111111111

Instructions: LoaderInstruction The BPF Upgradeable Loader marks itself as "owner" of the executable and program-data accounts it creates to store your program. When a user invokes an instruction via a program id, the Velas runtime will load both your the program and its owner, the BPF Upgradeable Loader. The runtime then passes your program to the BPF Upgradeable Loader to process the instruction.

More information about deployment

Secp256k1 Program​

Verify secp256k1 public key recovery operations (ecrecover).

Program id: KeccakSecp256k11111111111111111111111111111

Instructions: new_secp256k1_instruction The secp256k1 program processes an instruction which takes in as the first byte a count of the following struct serialized in the instruction data:

struct Secp256k1SignatureOffsets {
    secp_signature_key_offset: u16,        // offset to [signature,recovery_id,etherum_address] of 64+1+20 bytes
    secp_signature_instruction_index: u8,  // instruction index to find data
    secp_pubkey_offset: u16,               // offset to [signature,recovery_id] of 64+1 bytes
    secp_signature_instruction_index: u8,  // instruction index to find data
    secp_message_data_offset: u16,         // offset to start of message data
    secp_message_data_size: u16,           // size of message data
    secp_message_instruction_index: u8,    // index of instruction data to get message data
}

Pseudo code of the operation:

process_instruction() {
  for i in 0..count {
      // i'th index values referenced:
      instructions = &transaction.message().instructions
      signature = instructions[secp_signature_instruction_index].data[secp_signature_offset..secp_signature_offset + 64]
      recovery_id = instructions[secp_signature_instruction_index].data[secp_signature_offset + 64]
      ref_eth_pubkey = instructions[secp_pubkey_instruction_index].data[secp_pubkey_offset..secp_pubkey_offset + 32]
      message_hash = keccak256(instructions[secp_message_instruction_index].data[secp_message_data_offset..secp_message_data_offset + secp_message_data_size])
      pubkey = ecrecover(signature, recovery_id, message_hash)
      eth_pubkey = keccak256(pubkey[1..])[12..]
      if eth_pubkey != ref_eth_pubkey {
          return Error
      }
  }
  return Success
}

This allows the user to specify any instruction data in the transaction for signature and message data. By specifying a special instructions sysvar, one can also receive data from the transaction itself.

Cost of the transaction will count the number of signatures to verify multiplied by the signature cost verify multiplier.

Optimization notes​

The operation will have to take place after (at least partial) deserialization, but all inputs come from the transaction data itself, this allows it to be relatively easy to execute in parallel to transaction processing and PoH verification.