New genesis handling

[tzdybal]

Execution API defines InitChain method, which takes genesis time, genesis block height and chain ID as params.
This parameters are usually a part of genesis file, which is implementation specific.

To resolve this issue there are multiple options:

1. Create rollkit-specific "genesis" file.
2. Add this to rollkit config / command line options.
3. Add a method in Execution API for parsing those options from genesis file.

Option 1 & 2 are fragile and require node operators to keep duplicated configuration in sync.

[MSevey]

Seems like option 3 would make the most sense since the rollup node should read its genesis file and then communicate to the execution API.
That behavior wouldn't change with option 1 or 2 correct? So those options would just be trying to add some extra handling outside of the execution API and genesis file creation.

[gupadhyaya]

why are genesis time, genesis height and chain id are implementation specific? I think all of these belong to consensus client and are common for any implementation (abci and engine both have these). in abci also, the consensus client communicates them to abci app via initchain. why do we need to change anything here?

[gupadhyaya]

genesis file needs to be refactored to two files one containing consensus client related information (such as above) which are parsed by rollkit and another containing implementation specific information parsed by the execution implementation.

[tzdybal]

Those parameters are not implementation specific themselves, but the way they are stored in genesis file is implementation specific.

IMHO having 2 separate genesis files is a very bad DX. If we require rollkit users to move (to avoid duplication) those 3 params to separate file, this is not only extra step, but probably also requires changes to original genesis parsing logic (as those fields may be required in genesis).
If we require rollkit users to extract/copy those 3 params from original genesis file to rollkit genesis, it will lead to confusion and user errors like changing param in only one file, or in wrong file (if one is prioritized more).

What I'm proposing with "Option 3" is to create a way to automate the manual step of extracting values from implementation-specific genesis into rollkit genesis.

[Manav-Aggarwal]

In terms of DevEx, in my view, the user should be only need to modify a rollkit-specific genesis and everything else that happens under the hood is an implementation detail that should be abstracted away from the user.