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Proposal 1: Erst - Soroban Error Decoder & Debugger

Targeting: Infrastructure / Developer Tooling Problem: "Subpar Error Reporting" is the #1 developer pain point on Stellar.

Executive Summary

Developers building on Soroban (Stellar's smart contract platform) currently face a "black box" debugging experience. When a transaction fails on mainnet, the error returned is often a generic XDR code (e.g., HostError). Tracing why it failed requires complex setups, running local standalone nodes, and manually trying to reproduce the state.

erst proposes to be the missing link: a CLI tool that takes a failed transaction hash, automatically fetches the historical ledger state, and "replays" the transaction locally with verbose debug tracing enabled, mapping errors back to the original Rust source code.

The Problem in Detail

  1. Opaque Errors: tx_failed responses often contain binary XDR blobs that, when decoded, result in generic messages like Error(WasmVm, InvalidAction).
  2. State Dependency: Contracts fail because of specific state (e.g., "Balance too low", "TTL expired"). Reproducing this locally is hard because developers' local tests don't have the mainnet state.
  3. Adoption Blocker: New developers coming from Ethereum (Hardhat/Foundry) expect stack traces. The lack of them on Stellar is a major friction point.

Proposed Solution: erst debug <tx-hash>

The erst tool will provide a simple workflow:

  1. Input: Developer runs erst debug 5c0a... (Transaction Hash).
  2. Fetch: erst queries a Horizon/RPC archive node to get:
    • The transaction envelope (inputs, args).
    • The ledger number it failed in.
    • The Read/Write set (state keys) required for that transaction.
  3. Replay: erst spins up a lightweight, embedded soroban-env-host instance (via Rust FFI or native Go implementation if feasible, likely Rust FFI).
  4. Trace: It executes the transaction against that forked state with debug_mode=true.
  5. Report: It outputs a human-readable trace: 
    Replaying Transaction 5c0a... locally...
[INFO] Call Contract A::deposit()
[INFO]   > Call Contract B::transfer()
[ERROR]  < Contract B failed: "Insufficient Allowance" at line 45 (token.rs)

Value Proposition

  • For Developers: Saves hours of debugging time.
  • For the Ecosystem: Removes a primary complaint hindering Soroban adoption.
  • For Maintainers: Positions erst as a critical infrastructure piece, eligible for SCF Infrastructure Grants.