AVM: Allow access to boxes for apps made in the same group without explicit boxrefs

[jannotti]

Summary

We have heard many requests to allow for the creation of boxes in newly created apps. That appears to already be allowed, since 0 signals "current app" in a BoxRef. But that doesn't work for inner apps, since BoxRefs only appear at the top-level and they are "resolved" there, to the app id at the top-level.

This seems like a naming issue, "How can we name these inner create boxes"? That seems hard. But, we are in luck, because there's really no reason to be so stingy with access to boxes for newly created apps. Those boxes can't exist, because the app is new, so we can short circuit the lookup on disk.

We know they are empty, so we need not worry about exceeded read quota. We will still treat them as dirty, so standard write quota checks will handle that side.

We bound the number of boxes that can be accessed this way by the number of empty box refs. This means that the number of boxes written is bounded, not just the sum of the lengths.

Test Plan

Added new tests in boxtxn_test.go that exercises the new capabilities (and ensure they are no usable in old versions)

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR implements support for unnamed box access in newly created apps within the same group. It updates transaction and box logic to allow a one‑time empty box reference access, and adds comprehensive tests to verify the new behavior.

• Added tests in boxtxn_test.go to cover various unnamed box creation cases.
• Updated resources and box handling in the logic package to account for unnamed access.
• Modified consensus parameters in config/consensus.go to enable the new feature.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
ledger/boxtxn_test.go	New tests for unnamed box access and minor documentation updates
data/transactions/logic/resources.go	Added tracking for unnamedAccess in box resources
data/transactions/logic/box.go	Updated availableBox to permit unnamed box access in new apps
config/consensus.go	Added the EnableUnnamedBoxAccessInNewApps consensus parameter and set it in vFuture

Files not reviewed (1)

• Makefile: Language not supported

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Attention: Patch coverage is 68.54839% with 39 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Project coverage is 51.59%. Comparing base (5c49e9a) to head (4ab48f2).
Report is 1 commits behind head on master.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
daemon/algod/api/server/v2/utils.go	0.00%	14 Missing ⚠️
ledger/simulation/resources.go	84.84%	4 Missing and 6 partials ⚠️
data/transactions/logic/box.go	66.66%	6 Missing and 2 partials ⚠️
data/basics/overflow.go	75.00%	1 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
data/transactions/logic/eval.go	75.00%	1 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
data/transactions/logic/resources.go	0.00%	1 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
daemon/algod/api/server/v2/handlers.go	0.00%	1 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #6309      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   51.60%   51.59%   -0.01%     
==========================================
  Files         649      649              
  Lines       87013    87070      +57     
==========================================
+ Hits        44903    44925      +22     
- Misses      39244    39273      +29     
- Partials     2866     2872       +6     

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[SilentRhetoric]

[Nit] Consider amending the title to the following for clarity:

Allow access to boxes for apps of unknown ID made in the same group

[jannotti]

[Nit] Consider amending the title to the following for clarity:

Allow access to boxes for apps of unknown ID made in the same group

I hope the current title is clearer.

[jannotti]

The following concern is noted:

One thing that comes to mind is making sure simulate will see this. We need to make sure that a client that uses simulate to populate references is able to get data to know that it needs an empty reference for the create attempt.

That's a good call-out. I'm not sure exactly how to handle it, but we should certainly do something. I'm not exactly sure what the state of auto resource population is. But yes, we certainly don't want to tell callers: You need a box ref for {28734, "hello"} just because the app created during simulation happened to be 28734. We need to report that adding {0,""} would make the call work.

[jannotti]

The following concern is noted:

One thing that comes to mind is making sure simulate will see this. We need to make sure that a client that uses simulate to populate references is able to get data to know that it needs an empty reference for the create attempt.

That's a good call-out. I'm not sure exactly how to handle it, but we should certainly do something. I'm not exactly sure what the state of auto resource population is. But yes, we certainly don't want to tell callers: You need a box ref for {28734, "hello"} just because the app created during simulation happened to be 28734. We need to report that adding {0,""} would make the call work.

It will now properly report that, say, 3 empty refs are needed, if you touch 3 boxes in a newly created app.

Previously, the simulate endpoint would simply report the app,name combo for any app touched, even if the app was a new ID. If a caller used that information blindly, it would certainly fail because the appID would be different when submitted. You might be able to construct torturous uses that would work, if the caller paid enough attention to the result to note that the appID returned matches the appID created in a later top-level transaction. So we left the old behaviour until a consensus change that enables this feature.

[Copilot]

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[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR introduces a feature that allows newly created apps within a transaction group to access boxes without explicit box references. The change enables more flexible box creation patterns for inner apps and eliminates the need to predict app IDs for box references in certain scenarios.

Key changes:

• Adds EnableUnnamedBoxAccessInNewApps consensus parameter to enable the feature
• Introduces empty box references that can be "consumed" to allow box access in newly created apps
• Updates simulation and resource tracking to handle the new access pattern

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 14 out of 14 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
config/consensus.go	Adds new consensus parameter EnableUnnamedBoxAccessInNewApps
data/transactions/logic/resources.go	Implements tracking of unnamed access slots from empty box refs
data/transactions/logic/eval.go	Updates evaluation to handle new app box access and surplus budget calculation
data/transactions/logic/box.go	Core logic for allowing box access in newly created apps without explicit refs
ledger/simulation/resources.go	Updates resource tracking to support new box access patterns and I/O surplus handling
ledger/boxtxn_test.go	Comprehensive tests for the new box access capabilities
Multiple test files	Updates to handle new BoxStat structure and simplified resource tracking

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[gmalouf]

Left a few questions/comments

[cce]

what happened in v38?

[jannotti]

That v9 of AVM, and tx.Access is not allowed until then. (It's when resource sharing happened, so I couldn't easily make tx.Access work for earlier versions.)