Commit signatures may be empty/missing

[ethanfrey]

Tendermint rpc can return an empty field here: https://github.com/cosmos/cosmjs/blob/main/packages/tendermint-rpc/src/tendermint34/adaptors/v0-34/responses.ts#L421

I got the following error querying musselnet:

(node:66990) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Value must not be null
    at assertSet (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/encodings.js:16:15)
    at Object.assertNotEmpty (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/encodings.js:107:5)
    at decodeCommitSignature (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/adaptors/v0-34/responses.js:182:54)
    at Array.map (<anonymous>)
    at decodeCommit (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/adaptors/v0-34/responses.js:190:62)
    at decodeCommitResponse (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/adaptors/v0-34/responses.js:197:17)
    at decodeCommit (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/adaptors/v0-34/responses.js:354:16)
    at Tendermint34Client.doCall (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/node_modules/@cosmjs/tendermint-rpc/build/tendermint34/tendermint34client.js:263:16)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:93:5)
    at async IbcClient.getSignedHeader (/home/ethan/js/ts-relayer/build/main/lib/ibcclient.js:170:58)

Please make it optional (and maybe investigate a bit more first if you wish, there may be other aspects)

[ethanfrey]

Digging in more, it seems this happens when we get latest commit (non-canonical, not all sigs may have arrives). It will often have some "absent" fields. If block_flag_id is 1 (absent), all other fields should not be present when making protobuf. If block_flag_id is 2 (signed), all other fields are required.

Note that timestamp is not empty or "", but rather the "0" time: 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z. But we must omit the field when making protobuf, not end up with some super low time... and this causes a few issues parsing from this ancient timestamp to a js Date object to a protobuf Timestamp.

I will allow empty arrays and add special handling for this timestamp. Hopefully they have a better api soon.

curl https://rpc.musselnet.cosmwasm.com/commit | jq .result.signed_header.commit.signatures

[
  {
    "block_id_flag": 1,
    "validator_address": "",
    "timestamp": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "signature": null
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 2,
    "validator_address": "341CEE7B1BA35C23217A972885249913E7BB9FB3",
    "timestamp": "2021-03-11T23:32:15.528027253Z",
    "signature": "/ePTRC4jngJEUpVLcKx+Nr2r866qC25WCgOCXHQDHYFarC/tMkOtbVEQpjpikiTLZFaxmWv9hIXRUkQ9mY7BCA=="
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 2,
    "validator_address": "51341FF26563FC48BE4CC288BCC9A7EE545FA640",
    "timestamp": "2021-03-11T23:32:15.5472272Z",
    "signature": "zp7anVoXoPKJ17L/1jGUgJqySNmlK673vcGe7zvWqCkfgERKIL4PzDvmwtRi0BYADb9rH/U7N/H6vHuOUI1/DQ=="
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 2,
    "validator_address": "87E6508A07E5F8BEA157162857C1DC3FA8AFC41B",
    "timestamp": "2021-03-11T23:32:15.543324576Z",
    "signature": "rZ6bqWE9IobtYEVeIZEs+szZBpJo/DJXFqNl/73FLynSywjWscgtpkyugrZBojiL0+apQ8i58A5NKu5J4bPhDQ=="
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 2,
    "validator_address": "9830095087C6FD7E15DDCDB2CB7E544B86C81BD3",
    "timestamp": "2021-03-11T23:32:15.542127538Z",
    "signature": "LBbWFHRAiog2uAmUVeoaWZwNCagZoTIgUMFIpKNAR2IckPBHfcfmTKQ3oxUwvaH2Assy/lNdptulY04SSmuEDg=="
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 1,
    "validator_address": "",
    "timestamp": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "signature": null
  },
  {
    "block_id_flag": 2,
    "validator_address": "E2E5431899A94672CC9850157C14BC67A6A5EAF7",
    "timestamp": "2021-03-11T23:32:15.550503887Z",
    "signature": "YeXxk7KsHKi9X1lMLjfuXldDL8MOVIfnekS2tCnn85yPAovgQmgFoC+AogZ1E4MKZ50AMgHHSDPu2avPFEA9Cg=="
  }
]

[webmaster128]

Done in #705 and released as 0.24.1

[clockworkgr]

@ethanfrey @webmaster128

and this causes a few issues parsing from this ancient timestamp to a js Date object to a protobuf Timestamp.

At least some of the problem was due to a bug in the fromRfc3339 method which parsed year 0001 as 1901 (due to how Date.UTC() treats years 1-99).

The solution in #705 combined with cosmjs-types@0.9.0 breaks https://github.com/confio/ts-relayer like so:

• Tendermint light client in the relayer reads the CommitSigs in order to include them in a MsgUpdateClient.
• Properly handle missing commit signatures #705 solution sets the timestamps to undefined
• cosmjs-types encoding encodes undefined as google.protobuf.Timestamp { seconds:0n, nanos: 0 }
• that is Unix epoch zero (i.e. 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000) rather than time.Time zero
• Attempting to submit MsgUpdateClient fails with rpc error: code = Unknown desc = header is not a tendermint header: time is present

This is due to the following check: https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/blob/main/types/block.go#L662
since '1970-01-01 00:00:00.000' != '0001-01-01 00:00:00.000'

I suggest no special treatment as implemented here:
#1516