Filecoin v18 Hygge Upgrade

Filecoin is about to release its v18 upgrade, called Hygge, which brings several important improvements to the network. One of the most significants is the introduction of the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM), which enables user programmability on the network.

As new built-in actor, the FEVM runtime actor, is capable of running EVM smart contracts on top of the Filecoin Virtual Machine. The actor uses a special-purpose EVM interpreter that translates environment-dependent opcodes into their corresponding Filecoin primitives. The FEVM motivates changes in the FVM, such as modified and added syscalls and new environmental data. This FIP is dependent on other FIPs such as f4 address class, actor events, and Supporting Ethereum Accounts, Addresses, and Transactions.

The FVM allows developers to create and deploy smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) on the Filecoin network. This is a significant development for the network, as it enables users to interact with the network in new and exciting ways, expanding the range of use cases for Filecoin beyond simple storage and retrieval.Also it enable developers to create complex, self-executing contracts that execute automatically when certain conditions are met. This enables a wide range of use cases, from decentralized finance (DeFi) to supply chain management and more. These smart contracts can be used to automate a variety of processes and ensure that transactions are executed automatically, without the need for intermediaries.

In addition to the FVM, the v18 Hygge upgrade also includes several other improvements, specifically:

FIP-0048: Introduces a new user-extensible address class that enables the creation of new addressing schemes without extensive network upgrades. This is achieved through the creation of a new f4 address class that supports the native addressing schemes of foreign runtimes and allows funds to be sent to an address before an actor is deployed. This feature includes the f4 address in ActorState objects and adds a new syscall for looking up an actor's f4 address. This update provides greater flexibility and versatility in address management, enabling more complex and advanced use cases on the Filecoin network.

FIP-0049: This FIP introduces a minimal design for actor events, including their schema, a new syscall, a new field in the MessageReceipt structure, and mechanics to commit these execution side effects on the chain. "Minimal" because the protocol stays largely unopinionated and unprescriptive around higher level concerns like event indexing, traversal, and proofs (e.g. inclusion proofs for light clients), and other future higher-level features.

FIP-0050: The built-in actors, or "protocol actors," in the Filecoin network have been changed and updated over time, but must remain stable in order for user-programmed actors, or smart contracts, to rely on their interfaces. This FIP proposes a way to balance the need for updates and stability by only exposing a stable subset of built-in actor interfaces to user-programmed actors. This is done through a restriction on method numbers derived from the calling convention in FRC-0042, with all existing methods restricted by default and some explicitly re-exported for invocation by user actors.

FIP-0054: In this FIP Filecoin introduces a new built-in actor, the Filecoin EVM (FEVM) runtime actor, capable of running EVM smart contracts on top of the Filecoin Virtual Machine and compatible with the Ethereum Paris fork, plus EIP-3855 (PUSH0).

FIP-0055: This one introduces three technical elements including formally defining the f410 Ethereum address space managed by the Ethereum Address Manager (EAM) built-in actor, which offers public methods to act as a factory for EVM smart contracts. It Introduces the Ethereum Account built-in actor that represents an Externally-Owned Ethereum account. And adds the Delegated signature type, carrying a signature eventually verified by actor code through Account Abstraction (AA). The Account actor (f1/f3) is extended to accept all methods greater than or equal to the minimum FRC-0042 method number (2^24) and to align it with the Ethereum Account actor and Placeholder actor.

FIP-0057: This FIP proposes a few adjustments to the gas charging schedule to ensure that the gas model accurately reflects the cost of on-chain computation, since with the introduction of FEVM, users will be able to deploy new smart contracts with fine-grained control over FVM execution. Also introduces overall memory limits that currently include Wasm memories and table elements. Additionally, this FIP introduces a maximum block size limit of 1MiB for all newly created IPLD blocks. Finally, this FIP reduces the maximum recursive call depth limit from 1025 to 1024 to bring it in-line with the initial intentions of this limit and other blockchain VMs.

⚠️ We suggest upgrading your nodes to this version as soon as possible, all node operators must be on lotus v1.20.0 & ^ for this upgrade. ⚠️

Timeline

2023-02-21 Calibration-testnet upgrade. (Today 🙂 )

2023-02-28, lotus v1.20.0

2023-03-14, mainnet upgrade

• Hygge Upgrade

• You can check the release note with the details of the upgrade here (Github)