TPSER (ti-pi-es-er)

Is a set of tools dedicated to test the performance of Ethereum compliant blockchain networks.
The main goal, is to provide the blockchain operators some insight into its performance.
This data can than be used to "fine tune" the blockchain client and possibly improve performance.

MODES

The tpser program consists of only two modes for now, more to be added later.
For now, only the EOA transfers are supported. ERC20 and ERC721 will follow soon.

BlocksFetcher

The blocks fetcher mode fetches the information about the specified range of blocks and shows a nicely formatted table result, with the basic information about the blocks, like:

• timestamp
• block number
• the number of transactions in a block
• block gas size
• block gas utilization

Finally, the mode will show the average TPS (transactions per second), TOTAL TRANSACTIONS and TOTAL DURATION

TPS is calculated in a very rudimentary fashion, by dividing the total duration in seconds by the total number of transactions

LongSender

The long-sender modes is used for sending a specific number of transactions per second for a set period of time.
This is useful when testing the network for stability after the new version has been released, memory leaks, etc.
As the transactions can be sent for a long time, operators can get useful data from the blockchain logs and metrics. The long-sender won't wait for receipts, and as such there is no information about the state of the transactions.

Optionally, the TPS report can be generated, but it's not advisable to do so if the long-sender was running for a long time, as there can be a huge number of blocks with transactions.

Usage

Common Flags

• -json-rpc - the ethernet json-rpc http(s)/ws(s) endpoint
• -log-level - the log level output - default: info
  • info
  • debug
• -mode - the mode of operation:
  • blocks-fetcher - runs in the BlockFetcher mode
  • long-sender - runs in the LongSender mode
• -duration - time in minutes of how long the long-sender will run
• -to - the account to which the funds will be sent
• -report <bool> - should the final TPS report be generated
• -tps - how much transactions per second will be sent

BlocksFetcher

BlockStart/BlockEnd

• -block-start - the starting block
• -block-end - the end block

tpser \
    -mode blocks-fetcher \   
    -json-rpc <JSON-RPC URL> \     
    -block-start <START_BLOCK_NUMBER> \
    -block-end <END_BLOCK_NUMBER>

if block-start is omitted, it will be set to block 1

BlockRange

• -block-range - fetch a defined range of blocks, starting from the latest available

go run . -json-rpc <JSON_RPC_URL> -block-range <RANGE_OF_BLOCKS>

blocks-fetcher is default mode, so the flag can be omitted

LongSender

Using private key

• -pk - the private key of the account that has funds

tpser \
    -mode long-sender \   
    -json-rpc <JSON-RPC URL>      
    -pk <PRIVATE_KEY> \
    -to <ADDRESS> \
    -tps <NUMBER_OF_TX_PER_SEC> \
    -duration <DURATION_OF_THE_TEST_IN_MIN>

Using mnemonic

• -mnemonic - the mnemonic string used to derive accounts
• -mnemonic-addr - the number of derived accounts to use, starting from 0

tpser \
    -mode long-sender \   
    -json-rpc <JSON-RPC URL>      
    -mnemonic <MNEMONIC_STRING> \
    -mnemonic-addr <NUMBER_OF_ACCOUNTS> \
    -to <ADDRESS> \
    -tps <NUMBER_OF_TX_PER_SEC> \
    -duration <DURATION_OF_THE_TEST_IN_MIN>

LongSender mode can be effectively used to find your blockchain most stable TPS. Its job is to send a defined number of transactions every second for a specified duration. If your blockchain client can handle this load, without any transaction errors, you can feel confident that the specified TPS can be processed in production.

How would you do this:

• Run long-sender with, for example -tps 300 and -timeout 1440.
  This will send 300 transactions every second non-stop for 24h.
• Periodically check for long-sender error output, for any transaction errors
• Periodically check block utilisation and transactions mined, usingblocks-fetcher module with -block-range 100 flag
• Presuming that block time is set to 2s, 100 blocks should be processed in 200s, and they should contain ~60 000 transactions (300tx * 200s (100blocks, each mined in 2s))