feat: implement relaxed period in clique (#763)

* feat: implement relaxed period in clique

and enable it on Sepolia

* simplify if check

* chore: auto version bump [bot]

* Update clique.go

---------

Co-authored-by: omerfirmak <omerfirmak@users.noreply.github.com>

consensus/clique/clique.go

@@ -328,7 +328,7 @@ func (c *Clique) verifyCascadingFields(chain consensus.ChainHeaderReader, header
  if parent == nil || parent.Number.Uint64() != number-1 || parent.Hash() != header.ParentHash {
  return consensus.ErrUnknownAncestor
  }
- if parent.Time+c.config.Period > header.Time {
+ if header.Time < parent.Time {
  return errInvalidTimestamp
  }
  // Verify that the gasUsed is <= gasLimit
@@ -555,7 +555,9 @@ func (c *Clique) Prepare(chain consensus.ChainHeaderReader, header *types.Header
  return consensus.ErrUnknownAncestor
  }
  header.Time = parent.Time + c.config.Period
- if header.Time < uint64(time.Now().Unix()) {
+ // If RelaxedPeriod is enabled, always set the header timestamp to now (ie the time we start building it) as
+ // we don't know when it will be sealed
+ if c.config.RelaxedPeriod || header.Time < uint64(time.Now().Unix()) {
  header.Time = uint64(time.Now().Unix())
  }
  return nil

miner/scroll_worker.go

@@ -708,7 +708,14 @@ func (w *worker) startNewPipeline(timestamp int64) {
 
  w.currentPipelineStart = time.Now()
  w.currentPipeline = pipeline.NewPipeline(w.chain, w.chain.GetVMConfig(), parentState, header, nextL1MsgIndex, w.getCCC()).WithBeforeTxHook(w.beforeTxHook)
- if err := w.currentPipeline.Start(time.Unix(int64(header.Time), 0)); err != nil {
+
+ deadline := time.Unix(int64(header.Time), 0)
+ if w.chainConfig.Clique != nil && w.chainConfig.Clique.RelaxedPeriod {
+ // clique with relaxed period uses time.Now() as the header.Time, calculate the deadline
+ deadline = time.Unix(int64(header.Time+w.chainConfig.Clique.Period), 0)
+ }
+
+ if err := w.currentPipeline.Start(deadline); err != nil {
  log.Error("failed to start pipeline", "err", err)
  return
  }

params/config.go

@@ -602,8 +602,9 @@ func (c *EthashConfig) String() string {
 
 // CliqueConfig is the consensus engine configs for proof-of-authority based sealing.
 type CliqueConfig struct {
- Period uint64 `json:"period"` // Number of seconds between blocks to enforce
- Epoch uint64 `json:"epoch"` // Epoch length to reset votes and checkpoint
+ Period uint64 `json:"period"` // Number of seconds between blocks to enforce
+ Epoch uint64 `json:"epoch"` // Epoch length to reset votes and checkpoint
+ RelaxedPeriod bool `json:"relaxed_period"` // Relaxes the period to be just an upper bound
 }
 
 // String implements the stringer interface, returning the consensus engine details.

params/version.go

@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ import (
 const (
  VersionMajor = 5 // Major version component of the current release
  VersionMinor = 3 // Minor version component of the current release
- VersionPatch = 18 // Patch version component of the current release
+ VersionPatch = 19 // Patch version component of the current release
  VersionMeta = "mainnet" // Version metadata to append to the version string
 )