Fast construction of Transaction when reading from the chain db

Transactions that contains mints involve parsing assets, which in turn
involve parsing public addresses of the owner for those assets. Parsing
a public address is currently an expensive operation, because it
involves elliptic curve point multiplications.

Transactions containing mints are therefore harmful for the performance
of wallet scans.

To improve the performance of wallet scans, this commit:
- introduces a new `PublicAddress::new_unchecked` (in Rust) constructor
  that speeds up construction of public addresses from trusted input;
- adds a `skipValidation` parameter to `Transaction` (in TypeScript) to
  allow using the "unchecked" variants of constructors;
- changes the chain db deserializer to read transactions using
  `skipValidation: true`.

Note that, while the goal of this commit is to improve wallet scan
performance, the impact of this commit is actually broader: it impacts
all reads from the chain db. This is good for performance, but may be a
concern for security and stability. The assumption is that if something
is stored in the chain db, then it was previously validated and
therefore it can be trusted.

ironfish-rust-nodejs/index.d.ts

@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ export class Asset {
   static nativeId(): Buffer
   id(): Buffer
   serialize(): Buffer
-  static deserialize(jsBytes: Buffer): NativeAsset
+  static deserialize(jsBytes: Buffer, skipValidation?: boolean | undefined | null): NativeAsset
 }
 export type NativeNoteEncrypted = NoteEncrypted
 export class NoteEncrypted {

ironfish-rust-nodejs/src/structs/asset.rs

@@ -91,9 +91,15 @@ impl NativeAsset {
     }
 
     #[napi(factory)]
-    pub fn deserialize(js_bytes: JsBuffer) -> Result<Self> {
+    pub fn deserialize(js_bytes: JsBuffer, skip_validation: Option<bool>) -> Result<Self> {
         let bytes = js_bytes.into_value()?;
-        let asset = Asset::read(bytes.as_ref()).map_err(to_napi_err)?;
+        let skip_validation = skip_validation.unwrap_or(false);
+        let asset = if !skip_validation {
+            Asset::read(bytes.as_ref())
+        } else {
+            Asset::read_unchecked(bytes.as_ref())
+        }
+        .map_err(to_napi_err)?;
 
         Ok(NativeAsset { asset })
     }

ironfish-rust/src/assets/asset.rs

@@ -134,6 +134,20 @@ impl Asset {
         Asset::new_with_nonce(creator, name, metadata, nonce)
     }
 
+    pub fn read_unchecked<R: io::Read>(mut reader: R) -> Result<Self, IronfishError> {
+        let creator = PublicAddress::read_unchecked(&mut reader)?;
+
+        let mut name = [0; NAME_LENGTH];
+        reader.read_exact(&mut name[..])?;
+
+        let mut metadata = [0; METADATA_LENGTH];
+        reader.read_exact(&mut metadata[..])?;
+
+        let nonce = reader.read_u8()?;
+
+        Asset::new_with_nonce(creator, name, metadata, nonce)
+    }
+
     /// Stow the bytes of this struct in the given writer.
     pub fn write<W: io::Write>(&self, mut writer: W) -> Result<(), IronfishError> {
         self.creator.write(&mut writer)?;

ironfish-rust/src/keys/public_address.rs

@@ -23,17 +23,18 @@ pub struct PublicAddress(pub(crate) SubgroupPoint);
 
 impl PublicAddress {
     /// Initialize a public address from its 32 byte representation.
-    pub fn new(
-        public_address_bytes: &[u8; PUBLIC_ADDRESS_SIZE],
-    ) -> Result<PublicAddress, IronfishError> {
-        assert!(public_address_bytes.len() == 32);
-        let public_address_non_prime = SubgroupPoint::from_bytes(public_address_bytes);
-
-        if public_address_non_prime.is_some().into() {
-            Ok(PublicAddress(public_address_non_prime.unwrap()))
-        } else {
-            Err(IronfishError::new(IronfishErrorKind::InvalidPaymentAddress))
-        }
+    pub fn new(bytes: &[u8; PUBLIC_ADDRESS_SIZE]) -> Result<Self, IronfishError> {
+        Option::from(SubgroupPoint::from_bytes(bytes))
+            .map(PublicAddress)
+            .ok_or_else(|| IronfishError::new(IronfishErrorKind::InvalidPaymentAddress))
+    }
+
+    /// Initialize a public address from its 32 byte representation, without performing expensive
+    /// checks on the validity of the address.
+    pub fn new_unchecked(bytes: &[u8; PUBLIC_ADDRESS_SIZE]) -> Result<Self, IronfishError> {
+        Option::from(SubgroupPoint::from_bytes_unchecked(bytes))
+            .map(PublicAddress)
+            .ok_or_else(|| IronfishError::new(IronfishErrorKind::InvalidPaymentAddress))
     }
 
     /// Load a public address from a Read implementation (e.g: socket, file)
@@ -43,6 +44,12 @@ impl PublicAddress {
         Self::new(&address_bytes)
     }
 
+    pub fn read_unchecked<R: io::Read>(reader: &mut R) -> Result<Self, IronfishError> {
+        let mut address_bytes = [0; PUBLIC_ADDRESS_SIZE];
+        reader.read_exact(&mut address_bytes)?;
+        Self::new_unchecked(&address_bytes)
+    }
+
     /// Initialize a public address from a sapling key. Typically constructed from
     /// SaplingKey::public_address()
     pub fn from_key(sapling_key: &SaplingKey) -> PublicAddress {

ironfish/src/blockchain/database/transactions.ts

@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ export class TransactionsValueEncoding implements IDatabaseEncoding<Transactions
     const transactions = []
 
     while (reader.left()) {
-      transactions.push(new Transaction(reader.readVarBytes()))
+      transactions.push(new Transaction(reader.readVarBytes(), { skipValidation: true }))
     }
 
     return { transactions }

ironfish/src/memPool/memPool.test.ts

@@ -598,10 +598,10 @@ describe('MemPool', () => {
       await chain.removeBlock(block.header.hash)
 
       expect(memPool.get(transaction.hash())).toBeDefined()
-      expect([...memPool.orderedTransactions()]).toContainEqual(transaction)
+      expect(memPool.orderedTransactions()).toContainEqual(transaction)
 
       expect(memPool.exists(minersFee.hash())).toBe(false)
-      expect([...memPool.orderedTransactions()]).not.toContainEqual(minersFee)
+      expect(memPool.orderedTransactions()).not.toContainEqual(minersFee)
     })
 
     it('does not add back in transactions with overlapping nullifiers if fee is smaller', async () => {

ironfish/src/primitives/transaction.ts

@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ export class Transaction {
   private transactionPosted: TransactionPosted | null = null
   private referenceCount = 0
 
-  constructor(transactionPostedSerialized: Buffer) {
+  constructor(transactionPostedSerialized: Buffer, options?: { skipValidation?: boolean }) {
     this.transactionPostedSerialized = transactionPostedSerialized
 
     const reader = bufio.read(this.transactionPostedSerialized, true)
@@ -109,14 +109,14 @@ export class Transaction {
       reader.seek(PROOF_LENGTH)
 
       // output note
-      return new NoteEncrypted(reader.readBytes(ENCRYPTED_NOTE_LENGTH, true))
+      return new NoteEncrypted(reader.readBytes(ENCRYPTED_NOTE_LENGTH, true), options)
     })
 
     this.mints = Array.from({ length: _mintsLength }, () => {
       // proof
       reader.seek(PROOF_LENGTH)
 
-      const asset = Asset.deserialize(reader.readBytes(ASSET_LENGTH))
+      const asset = Asset.deserialize(reader.readBytes(ASSET_LENGTH), options?.skipValidation)
       const value = reader.readBigU64()
 
       let owner = null

ironfish/src/testUtilities/matchers/index.ts

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
  * file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. */
 
 import './blockchain'
+import './transaction'
 import './buffer'
 import './merkletree'
 import './string'

ironfish/src/testUtilities/matchers/transaction.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+/* This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
+ * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
+ * file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. */
+import { Transaction } from '../../primitives/transaction'
+
+function areTransactionsEqual(a: unknown, b: unknown): boolean | undefined {
+  const isATransaction = a instanceof Transaction
+  const isBTransaction = b instanceof Transaction
+
+  if (isATransaction && isBTransaction) {
+    return a.equals(b)
+  } else if (!isATransaction && !isBTransaction) {
+    return undefined
+  } else {
+    return false
+  }
+}
+
+expect.addEqualityTesters([areTransactionsEqual])