New eth_getAddressesInBlock method

[perama-v]

Description

Introduction of a method to standardise the extraction of a set of addresses that are involved in an Ethereum block.

Dependencies

This method involves use of the concept of an address Appearance, defined here:

• feat(specs): add spec for address Appearance #456

Motivation

Documentation of the method allows different execution clients to implement the method. The method
itself is useful for obtaining knowledge that end-users can use (information about which transactions are relevant to their address). Multiple implementations allows detection of errors present in a single implementation through cross-client testing.

Background

The UnchainedIndex consists of "address appearances". It is a distributed index constructed by calling an Ethereum node using the trueblocks-core software (https://github.com/TrueBlocks/trueblocks-core). It finds addresses as they appear in each block and publishes the index. With this new method it could call a node to find addresses.

Changes made

• A specification for what an "address appearance" is
• An eth_ namespace method for fetching every "address appearance" in a single block
• Test case

Test case generator

A test case generator has been written (https://github.com/perama-v/unchained-reader). It uses data from the UnchainedIndex (and therefore trueblocks-core by extension) to create the
test cases for individual blocks.

An alternative test generator can be made with the chifra blocks command built into trueblocks-core.