Explain how race-conditions might affect programs.

[johnnymatthews]

Explain how race-conditions might affect programs.

A discussion popped up within the core Entropy team recently (paraphrased):

It doesn't matter how much time passes. When a user like Alice asks for a signature, there is a delay (D) between asking for the signature and putting it on the chain.

For example, if Alice requests a transaction with nonce = 1, but during the time delta, Bob also requests a transaction, he checks the chain and also sees a nonce of 1. So, he creates the transaction. After time D, we end up with two transactions both having nonce 1. Then, when Alice submits the nonce as now = 2, all transactions with nonce 1 become invalid. Similarly, when Bob submits his transaction, it's also invalid. In essence, it becomes a competition between anyone requesting a transaction within the time delta D.

User-developers should be aware of race-conditions like this, and should design their programs around them. Let's give user-developers some pointers on how they can mitigate situations like this.