Optimize contracts e2e

[l0r1s]

Summary

This PR makes the contract E2E CI faster and less flaky by removing retry-based masking, fixing deterministic test setup issues, and adding explicit caching for the expensive Rust compile path.

Key changes:

• Remove the GitHub Actions retry wrapper around the contract test suite.
• Run contract test files directly and collect failures instead of rerunning the whole job.
• Stop resubmitting finalized transactions; dispatch errors now fail deterministically.
• Stabilize the wasm contract tests by funding the contract account, using valid limit parameters, fixing stale caller setup, and asserting expected contract reverts.
• Fix tests that were previously only passing because transaction errors were swallowed.
• Add explicit Rust artifact caching for:
  • target/fast-runtime, used by scripts/localnet.sh
  • contract-tests/bittensor/target
  • Cargo registry/git cache

Why

The CI job was taking too long because failures could trigger full retries, and the localnet binary compile was still a major bottleneck. CI reported roughly 49m spent compiling, which is not acceptable for a contract E2E job that should mostly be exercising runtime behavior.

The test changes make failures explicit instead of hiding them behind retries. The workflow cache changes target the non-standard Rust target directory used by localnet, so warm-cache CI runs should avoid most of the repeated Subtensor binary compilation.

[github-actions]

🛡️ AI Review — Skeptic (security review)

VERDICT: SAFE

Baseline scrutiny: l0r1s has write permission, an established 2018 account, substantial contribution history, matching commit author, and no Gittensor allowlist hit; branch optimize-contracts-e2e -> devnet-ready.

Reviewed the workflow, CI script, and contract-test-only diff statically. The PR does not modify .github/ai-review/* or .github/copilot-instructions.md, does not touch runtime or pallet code, and does not add dependency or lockfile changes. The workflow remains scoped to contents: read; the added cache paths are limited to the contract-test build context.

Findings

No findings.

Conclusion

No malicious behavior or security vulnerability was found in the changed CI and contract-test files. Verdict is SAFE.

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🔍 AI Review — Auditor (domain review)

VERDICT: 👍

Gittensor: LIKELY; author has write permission and substantial prior subtensor activity, though no direct allowlist match was found.

The PR body is substantive and matches the implementation: it removes the job-level retry wrapper, runs contract tests per file, makes dispatch errors fail deterministically, and adds targeted Rust/Yarn caching for the contract E2E workflow.

Spec version: not required; the diff only touches workflow and contract-test files, not runtime or pallet implementation. Duplicate-work check found one-file overlaps with #2700 and #2685, but the available metadata shows unrelated scopes, so this PR remains the better candidate for the contract E2E optimization work.

Validation performed: git diff --check passed, and bash -n contract-tests/run-ci.sh scripts/localnet.sh passed. I did not run the full contract E2E suite because no finding required runtime confirmation.

Findings

No findings.

Conclusion

Approve. The changes are scoped to CI/test reliability and speed, and the review did not identify a blocking correctness, runtime-safety, or process issue.

[github-actions]

🔄 AI review updated — Skeptic: SAFE Auditor: 👍

[github-actions]

🔄 AI review updated — Skeptic: SAFE Auditor: 👍