Make t9n and t8n tool compatible with fee-currency transactions

[ezdac]

Rationale

There are two geth evm tools that are currently not working with the fee-currency transactions:

• transition tool (t8n) : a stateless state transition utility
• transaction tool (t9n) : a transaction validation utility

The main reason both tools do not work out of the box with fee-currency transactions is the dependency on
on-chain data for both tx validation and state transition, while the tools itself are "stateless":

The t9n tools requires the intrinsic gas cost for the specific fee-currencies:

op-geth/cmd/evm/internal/t8ntool/transaction.go

Lines 136 to 146 in 111be39

	// NOTE: we can't provide specific intrinsic gas costs
	// for fee-currencies here, since those are written to the
	// FeeCurrencyDirectory contract and are chain-specific.
	// When a Celo transaction with specified fee-currency is validated with this tool,
	// this will thus result in a ErrNonWhitelistedFeeCurrency error for now.
	var feeIntrinsic common.IntrinsicGasCosts
	if gas, err := core.IntrinsicGas(tx.Data(), tx.AccessList(), tx.To() == nil,
	chainConfig.IsHomestead(new(big.Int)), chainConfig.IsIstanbul(new(big.Int)), chainConfig.IsShanghai(new(big.Int), 0), tx.FeeCurrency(), feeIntrinsic); err != nil {
	r.Error = err
	results = append(results, r)
	continue

And the t8n tool requires exchange rates as well as intrinsic gas costs for the specific fee-currencies:

op-geth/cmd/evm/internal/t8ntool/execution.go

Lines 209 to 214 in 111be39

	// NOTE: we can't provide exchange rates
	// for fee-currencies here, since those are dynamically changing
	// based on the oracle's exchange rates.
	// When a Celo transaction with specified fee-currency is validated with this tool,
	// this will thus result in a ErrNonWhitelistedFeeCurrency error for now.
	msg, err := core.TransactionToMessage(tx, signer, pre.Env.BaseFee, vmContext.FeeCurrencyContext.ExchangeRates)

Assessment

Before implementing this feature, determine wether this feature is required or wether we don't deem it necessary to use these evm CLI tools with fee-currency transactions.

Implementation

The main question for this issue is how the user can/should provide the required information to the CLI programs.