Automated assignment checker system

This project is a result of practice to understand main Solana concepts like owner, authority, Program Derived Addresses (PDA), signers, PDA signers, cross-program invocation (CPI), Associated token account (ATA). It contains a prototype of on-chain automated assignment checker system (AACS) that mints preconfigured number of course batch tokens when a student successfuly solves some assignment and sends correct result.

Solana is chosen because it allows to build energy efficient and concurrent on-chain programs. Due to efficiency transaction cost and confirmation time is much lower than in other public blockchains. Both on-chain and client side of the programs can benefit from usage of Rust and its ecosystem.

The prototype uses Anchor framework to organize accounts and their validation. Trdelnik is used to generate a test client and write a command line test that spins up local validator, deploys programs, initializes test fixture with configured accounts, creates them using the program instructions and runs the logic that tests behaviour of the AACS prototype.

Roles and programs

• Course authority - organizes Courses and their content. Promotes Courses to Students and runs Course batches. Prepares assignments for Students. Anybody can be a Course authority and organize own Courses.

• Student - enrolls into Course batch, solves assignments and sends hashed solutions to get Course batch tokens. Fully implemented MVP of AACS could exchange these batch specific tokens into other assets (like certifications or hiring rating). This functionality is outside of the prototype scope.

• CourseManager program derives and owns Course account. This account keeps Course authority pubkey for validation purposes. The account address (which is PDA) is used as a namespace to derive addresses of other accounts like Course batch, Course batch Mint, Assignment checker.

• CourseBatchManager program

  • derives and owns Course batch and Course batch Mint accounts for each batch created by the Course Authority. Course batch account is the mint authority of Course batch Mint account. Both accounts have PDAs. Only CourseBatchManager could sign for them.

  • Students can enroll in the batch and get their Student course batch ATA with zero balance of Course batch tokens.

  • Course authority can create AssignmentCheckerState accounts for each Course assignment, provide ground truth solution hashes and configure number of tokens that will be minted and tranfered to Student course batch ATA when correct solution is provided by a Student

  • Students can start solving assignments and create CheckResult accounts for them. CheckResult answers on two questions:

    1. whether the assignment check has ever passed
    2. whether the check has passed for the first time

    On finding a potential assignment solution Student initiates CheckAssignment operation. If it's succeded Student receives the tokens awarded for the submission of the correct solution hash. Tokens are awarded for each Student only once per Course and assignment.

• AssignmentChecker program is an owner of AssignmentCheckerState and CheckResult accounts. It checks whether provided solution hash with the given expected_hash_chain_length correctly hashes into stored ground_truth_hash_chain_tail. On successful check it cuts the tail of the hash chain and removes an opportunity to try the same solution hash by another student acting like a sequence of one-time passwords. AssignmentChecker stores the status of the check in CheckResult account.

  • AssignmentCheckerState and CheckResult accounts are PDAs derived from parameterized result_processor_program and required to be transaction signers
    • only the result_processor_program can create these accounts and run assignment solution check
    • CourseBatchManager program creates these accounts for AssignmentChecker and sets it be the accounts owner. It initializes them by doing CPI calls to AssignmentChecker - the only program that can mutate them.
    • CourseBatchManager program plays the role of result_processor_program during check_assignment operations. It does CPI call to AssignmentChecker to do the actual check and analyzes the state of CheckResult account
    • another program cannot pass AssignmentCheckerState and CheckResult accounts derived from CourseBatchManager because it cannot sign for these PDAs.
  • AssignmentChecker returns custom program errors when a hash chain has run out of capacity or check_assignment is called with incorrect expected_hash_chain_length. The later error could happen during concurrent checks made by several students. Client is expected to retry the call with updated expected_hash_chain_length value.

Testing

0. Install Rust + Cargo, Solana, Anchor and Trdelnik.

1. Build shared objects for on-chain programs, generate their Anchor IDL and Trdelink test .program_client module

    trdelnik build
   

2. Build and run test that will setup and test the entire check_assignment flow.

    trdelnik test
   

3. Optionally during test execution you can monitor program logs from the local test validator

    solana logs -u localhost
   

   When tokens are minted the following line is logged:

    Program log: minted 100 tokens to Too1UPuAw5enEA4PkdZUDnPfye9TsqH5bsqAWmYCas7