How to Use Milestones
TIP
This article will base everything on the official Swipechain Devnet Milestones.
When you fork Core and plan to run your own network this milestone configuration will be the one of the most interest to you to test your network before going live in production.
What Are Milestones and How Do They Work?
Milestones are a collection of height based configurations that determine things like how Core handles specific data, when new transaction types are valid or changes to fees and how many delegates are active as forgers.
Everytime a new block is received the height of a node changes and Core will check if there is a milestone that needs to be activated. Milestones are always merged from the earliest to the latest to ensure that all properties of the initial milestone are still intact and properties are only modified or added but never removed.
As previously explained the milestones are just collections of configurations that have keys and values. Lets take a look at the devnet milestones of SXP.
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"reward": 200000000
},
{
"height": 21600,
"block": {
"maxTransactions": 150,
"maxPayload": 6300000
}
},
{
"height": 910000,
"block": {
"maxTransactions": 500,
"maxPayload": 21000000
}
},
{
"height": 950000,
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": false
},
{
"height": 1750000,
"vendorFieldLength": 255
},
{
"height": 1895000,
"block": {
"idFullSha256": true
}
}
]
The first element in this array is the milestone that will kick in when you start network at height 1 with the genesis block, all other milestones will be merged into this one and overwrite existing properties or add new ones you specify in later milestones.
For example you can see that the reward is configured as 0 at height 1 which means blocks will be forged without any rewards for the delegates but the next milestone at height 10800 shows a reward property with a value of 200000000 which equals 2 SXP in our case.
As soon as the network reaches height 10800 it expects all blocks to be broadcasted with a reward of 200000000 and will no longer accept blocks that specify 0 as their reward which will result in a hard-fork for everyone that does not update as they will be unable to accept incoming blocks.
How Do I Modify or Add Properties?
Adding or modifying properties is as easy as adding a new object with the key-value pairs that you would like to add to previous milestone or overwrite. The next few examples should give you an idea about how simple it is to modify your milestones to change the behaviour and expectations of your network.
Changing the Forging Rewards at a Specific Height
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"reward": 200000000
}
]
Changing the Number of Delegates (Block Producers)
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"activeDelegates": 102
}
]
Changing the Number of a Transactions a Block Can Hold
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"block": {
"maxTransactions": 150,
"maxPayload": 6300000
}
}
]
Changing the Length of the Vendor Field / Smart Bridge
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"vendorFieldLength": 512
}
]
Changing the Time in Seconds to Produce and Broadcast Blocks
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"blocktime": 30
}
]
Adding Static Fees for New Transaction Types
[
{
"height": 1,
"reward": 0,
"activeDelegates": 51,
"blocktime": 8,
"block": {
"version": 0,
"maxTransactions": 50,
"maxPayload": 2097152
},
"epoch": "2017-03-21T13:00:00.000Z",
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"transfer": 10000000,
"secondSignature": 500000000,
"delegateRegistration": 2500000000,
"vote": 100000000,
"multiSignature": 500000000,
"ipfs": 0,
"timelockTransfer": 0,
"multiPayment": 0,
"delegateResignation": 0
}
},
"ignoreInvalidSecondSignatureField": true,
"vendorFieldLength": 64
},
{
"height": 10800,
"fees": {
"staticFees": {
"newTransactionType": 10000000
}
}
}
]
These are just a few examples of how you can modify existing milestone properties or add new ones.
WARNING
Whenever you are adding new properties, make sure that your code is able to handle undefined values when a network starts from 0.
The easiest way of doing this is to set an initial value in your genesis milestone (height 1) to not require any extra checks in your code.