Cosmos-sdk: AccountNumber should be AccountNonce

[jaekwon]

AccountNumber sounds like it's an account ID. It's more of a nonce.

bash cosmos-sdk$ ./build/gaiacli tx staking delegate --amount 100stake --help
delegate liquid tokens to a validator

Usage:
  gaiacli tx staking delegate [flags]

Flags:
      --account-number uint    AccountNumber number to sign the tx
      --amount string          Amount of coins to bond
...

Wouldn't it be less weird to call this --account-nonce? There would be no expectation that this number can be used as a lookup, for example. We don't index accounts by account number.

[jackzampolin]

I rather like this proposal. It makes much more clear what the number is used for. 👍 from me.

[cwgoes]

Hmm OK, but it's not the nonce of the account - that's the sequence number. I think we would risk confusing those two (as in e.g. Ethereum the account nonce is what we call the sequence number).

[alexanderbez]

second what @cwgoes stated. The account sequence number is the actual nonce.

[jaekwon]

They're both nonces, one is sequential, the other is not. I think it's still better to call a nonce a nonce than to call it a number, even if there's a different kind of nonce in the same struct, called a sequence. But here's a picture of a yak.

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[alexanderbez]

How about we keep AccountNumber and change SequenceNumber to Nonce?

[cwgoes]

How about we keep AccountNumber and change SequenceNumber to Nonce?

Unfortunately this will break the Ledger application.

[jleni]

If this change is necessary, we might need to allow for both names in the ledger app, it is feasible.
Still, I agree that using nonce instead of number brings more clarity to the purpose of those numbers.

There one additional mixup in gaiacli that makes this change a bit more useful to avoid confusion. :|

When creating an account gaiacli keys add has flags for account and index (numbers). Those two are used as part of the derivation path 44'/118'/{account}'/0/{index}, a totally unrelated use. I have noticed that some people mixup the account (HDPath) with the accountNumber (nonce).

I would definitely start using nonce where nonces are. Or as @jaekwon may prefer, the accountYak.

[b00f]

They're both nonces

Sequence number is same as nonce in Ethereum and it prevents replay attacks. However I don't understand what is the necessity of having account number? What would be happening it we didn't have account number at the first place?

[alexanderbez]

We have account numbers for account pruning purposes IIRC. That being said, I'm not sure if there is anything actionable -- doesn't seem there is clear consensus on any particular direction.

[b00f]

@alexanderbez Thanks, I found this which explains it.

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