Objectives

Improve the testing infrastructure by simulating realistic parametric networks with realistic activity in a controlled environment. This project follows .: aiming to implement a framework to simulate realistic parametric networks with realistic activity.

As a guiding principle, this tool must (short to mid-term) be used to:

• test and validate Better Attestation Quorum (BAQ) and other consensus improvements %(2024Q4) AQEAB: all bakers attest all blocks
• test and validate changes brought by the migration to OCaml 5 %"Migration to OCaml5"
• validate new releases and protocol amendments

Key goals:

• Simulate: the network should be fully simulated, with no real external users. It should be possible to describe network-wide scenarios to test specific behaviors and edge cases.
• Realistic Network: the framework should be able to mimic existing networks, with the same number of nodes, the same distribution of nodes, the same distribution of roles. It should be able to start from a snapshot of a real network.
• Parametric: Network parameters should be easily configured. In particular, the framework should be able to run with different blockchain parameters (block time, number of endorsements, etc). It should also be configurable to run locally or on a cloud provider.
• Realistic activity: the framework should be able to mimic realistic activity on the network. Similarly to RBT and TzTraffic, it should be able to generate activity by copy/patching real transaction from an existing network.

Key Deliverables and Milestones

• Deployable E2E solution
• Activity Generator
• Realistic Activity Generator
• Realistic Parametric Simulation