Block Metrics

This repo connects to a chia full node and maintains a MySQL database with some metadata about blocks which can then be used to query and generate block metrics. Additionally, the metrics are exported via a prometheus compatible /metrics endpoint.

Exported Metrics

Nakamoto Coefficient > 50%

Prometheus Name: chia_block_metrics_nakamoto_coefficient_gt50

Nakamoto coefficient (number of nodes required to collude for a majority) calculated at >50% of nodes.

Nakamoto Coefficient > 51%

Nakamoto coefficient (number of nodes required to collude for a majority) calculated at >51% of nodes.

Prometheus Name: chia_block_metrics_nakamoto_coefficient_gt51

Nakamoto Coefficient Adjusted > 50%

Adjusted nakamoto coefficient (number of nodes required to collude for a majority) calculated at >50% of nodes. The adjusted figure ignores certain farmer addresses (configurable with adjusted-ignore-addresses) in the calculation. This adjustment capability allows for accurate metrics with alternate farmer/harvester implementations that redirect a portion of farmer rewards to the developer's address. The default NC includes these dev addresses as large farmers, but since the individual farmers sign their own blocks, the Adjusted NC removes these dev addresses from the calculations.

Prometheus Name: chia_block_metrics_nakamoto_coefficient_gt50_adjusted

Nakamoto Coefficient Adjusted > 51%

Adjusted nakamoto coefficient (number of nodes required to collude for a majority) calculated at >51% of nodes. The adjusted figure ignores certain farmer addresses (configurable with adjusted-ignore-addresses) in the calculation. This adjustment capability allows for accurate metrics with alternate farmer/harvester implementations that redirect a portion of farmer rewards to the developer's address. The default NC includes these dev addresses as large farmers, but since the individual farmers sign their own blocks, the Adjusted NC removes these dev addresses from the calculations.

Prometheus Name: chia_block_metrics_nakamoto_coefficient_gt51_adjusted

Block Height

The peak block height in the database, which the metrics are calculated based on.

Prometheus Name: chia_block_metrics_nakamoto_coefficient_gt51_adjusted

Database Structure

The database current has a single blocks table with the following fields:

Column	Description
timestamp	Timestamp of this block. Only TX blocks have timestamps on chain. In this DB, other blocks use the next transaction block's timestamp for this field.
height	the height of this block
transaction_block	Whether or not this block is a transaction block
farmer_puzzle_hash	The puzzle hash the farmer reward was sent to for this block
farmer_address	The address the farmer reward was sent to for this block

Installation / Usage

make build will build the app and put the resulting binary in bin/block-metrics. The app needs a MySQL database to store the block information within.

Configuration Flags

The following configuration flags are available. These can be passed as flags at runtime, set in a yml file at ~/.block-metrics.yaml, or set as env vars prefixed with BLOCK_METRICS_, converting - to _, and all upper case.

adjusted-ignore-addresses is a list of addresses to ignore in the adjusted NC metric

chia-hostname The hostname to use to connect to the full node (default localhost)

db-host The hostname or IP address for the mysql server

db-name The name of the database in MySQL to store the block metrics data in

db-password The password for the database

db-port The port for the database (default 3306)

db-user The username to use when connecting to the DB

lookback-window How many blocks to look at when calculating the nakamoto coefficient (Default 32256)

metrics-port The port to run the prometheus metrics server on

rpc-per-page How many results to fetch in each RPC call when backfilling block information

Commands

Serve

block-metrics serve

The primary way to run the app is the serve command. This connects to the chia full node and listen for new blocks and adds them to the database. Each time a block is finished processing, the metrics are recalculated.

Backfill Blocks

block-metrics backfill-blocks [--delete-first]

This command backfills missing data from the full node into the database. If the --delete-first flag is used, the contents in the table will be deleted before reimporting.

Historical Output

block-metrics historical-output [--interval 100]

Generates a history.csv file with historical nakamoto coefficient data every blocks, based on the data present in the database. To export a full history of the chain, you must first backfill all missing blocks.