Block access list changes - BAL construction, execution and validation #32263

jwasinger · 2025-07-23T10:22:21Z

WIP. currently passes blockchain spec tests (tests that make use of balances >16 bytes are excluded).

Change summary:

when --experimentalbal is enabled:
- insertion of post-Cancun blocks which don't contain access lists will cause them to be created during block execution and embedded into the block body.
- Insertion of post-cancun blocks that contain access lists will perform transaction execution and post-state root calculation in parallel using the state diffs provided in the access list. The state diffs produced by execution are validated against the entries in the BAL.
Introduced new modified blockchain suite test runner which first imports the test chain (generating BALs), and then re-inserts the access-list-containing blocks.

Deviations from EIP-7928:

Use RLP for the encoding format instead of SSZ.
Modify BAL format to accomodate pre/post-tx execution state changes:
- entries with txindex=0 correspond to state reads/changes which occur from system contract execution before transactions.
- entries with txindx=1..len(block.transactions) correspond to state reads/changes occurring for each transaction.
- entries with txindex=len(block.transactions)+1 correspond to the post-block system contracts and EIP-4895 withdrawals.

TODO:

validation of BAL account/storage reads (it's somewhat likely that these will be removed from the spec, so I'm holding off for now).

jwasinger · 2025-07-23T10:28:16Z

A lot of the comments in the code are straight-up wrong/misleading. There's a lot of notes/reminders I made as I was implementing this, and not all of them have been removed/corrected at this point.

jwasinger · 2025-07-29T13:43:23Z

I've pushed parallel execution changes here.

Still failing 2 tests (other than modexp repricing ones which will be fixed with a rebase on master):

--- FAIL: TestExecutionSpecBlocktestsBAL/prague/eip7251_consolidations/consolidations_during_fork/consolidation_requests_during_fork.json (0.03s)
        block_test.go:233: test with config {snapshotter:false, scheme:path} failed: mismatch between BAl value and computed value
    --- FAIL: TestExecutionSpecBlocktestsBAL/prague/eip7002_el_triggerable_withdrawals/withdrawal_requests_during_fork/withdrawal_requests_during_fork.json (0.02s)
        block_test.go:233: test with config {snapshotter:false, scheme:path} failed: mismatch between BAl value and computed value

I've been trying to debug these but it's proving to be exceedingly difficult with the parallel execution enabled. The tests seem to relate to behavior of some system contracts on the fork boundaries, so I will just proceed with gathering numbers on mainnet performance for the meantime.

core/types/bal/bal.go

jwasinger · 2025-08-04T13:25:30Z

INFO [08-04|13:21:15.227] Imported new chain segment number=23,051,616 hash=228379..13abd2 blocks=0 txs=10783 mgas=1137.280 elapsed=8.072s mgasps=140.878 age=2d6h46m triediffs=271.84MiB triedirty=112.48MiB

Broke the block count on the insertion log statement here. Will try to fix tomorrow.

jwasinger · 2025-08-13T12:02:49Z

Getting some empty accounts in the BAL. example:

 {
      address: "0xff00000000000000000000000000000000008453"
  }

…hen enabled, post-Cancun blocks which lack access lists will have them constructed on execution during import. When importing blocks which contain access lists, transaction execution and state root calculation is performed in parallel.

…ved from BALs, there's not much gain from having a BAL state prefetcher

…ulation in statedb across multiple calls to Finalise. instead, Finalise now returns the diff that occurred from that call

lightclient

Looking good so far, just a few comments.

lightclient · 2025-08-21T20:07:02Z

core/blockchain.go

+		var resCh chan *ProcessResultWithMetrics
+		resCh, err = bc.processor.ProcessWithAccessList(block, statedb, bc.cfg.VmConfig)
+		if err != nil {
+			// TODO: okay to pass nil here as execution result?


Should be fine, we just use it to get out the receipts (if it is non nil).

core/blockchain.go

core/state/state_object.go

core/state_processor.go

params/config.go

…erdam. Enable access list generation in miner post-amsterdam

jwasinger · 2025-08-27T14:55:45Z

We decided on the EIP breakout call to keep account/storage reads in for now. Basically, without having this information it is possible that a transaction can be crafted which does a ton of storage reads and slow down the processing of the block significantly.

So until we can evaluate worst-cases here, account/storage reads are staying in the spec.

…explicitly requested). fix regression crash

jwasinger · 2025-08-28T08:45:38Z

core/blockchain.go

-			bc.prefetcher.Prefetch(block, throwaway, vmCfg, &interrupt)
+			if block.Body().AccessList == nil {
+				// only use the state prefetcher for non-BAL blocks.
+				bc.prefetcher.Prefetch(block, throwaway, vmCfg, &interrupt)


I previously implemented a state prefetcher for BALs. I deleted it so that the import benchmarks I am running will capture the BAL block processing speed equivalent to a synced node executing blocks at chain head.

We should probably add back the BAL prefetcher and measure the import performance.

jwasinger · 2025-08-28T09:36:13Z

Also TODO: need to implement validation of storage/account reads against the BAL.

jwasinger · 2025-08-28T10:34:34Z

core/state/statedb.go

@@ -118,6 +120,14 @@ type StateDB struct {
 	// The tx context and all occurred logs in the scope of transaction.
 	thash   common.Hash
 	txIndex int
+	sender  common.Address


remove trhis.

gballet · 2025-08-28T10:34:37Z

core/state/statedb.go

@@ -118,6 +120,14 @@ type StateDB struct {
 	// The tx context and all occurred logs in the scope of transaction.
 	thash   common.Hash
 	txIndex int
+	sender  common.Address


leftover, remove

gballet · 2025-08-28T10:38:28Z

core/types/bal/bal.rlp.hex

this should not be committed

Yeah, it's leftover test data for a unit test that no longer exists (but should be updated and added back in).

jwasinger mentioned this pull request Jul 23, 2025

core/state: implement optional BAL construction in statedb #31959

Closed

jwasinger commented Aug 3, 2025

View reviewed changes

core/types/bal/bal.go Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

jwasinger force-pushed the bal-execution branch 2 times, most recently from ab1c562 to 8f200db Compare August 4, 2025 08:51

jwasinger marked this pull request as ready for review August 4, 2025 10:13

jwasinger requested review from fjl, gballet, rjl493456442, zsfelfoldi, s1na, lightclient and MariusVanDerWijden as code owners August 4, 2025 10:13

rjl493456442 and others added 14 commits August 15, 2025 11:40

trie: introduce UpdateBatch

cd191ed

integrate trie batch update into statedb intermediate root calculation

0dcd0e2

more cleanups

038f038

fix lint

10dbc70

update metrics for BAL

5ad76d3

try fix

206b22b

fix

e615211

remove accidental line deletion

7b40a5b

add debug_getEncodedBlockAccesslist

c223cec

remove BAL prefetcher: with account/storage reads planning to be remo…

1c60b1a

…ved from BALs, there's not much gain from having a BAL state prefetcher

fix method name

2322ff9

rework of state diff calculation to be much faster. remove diff accum…

6d26f07

…ulation in statedb across multiple calls to Finalise. instead, Finalise now returns the diff that occurred from that call

add test data

43d6f2a

jwasinger added 5 commits August 20, 2025 22:24

less statedb copies up-front before beginning tx execution

d735907

add metric for BAL->diff creation

c0b1fb9

wip: don't build state-diffs from BAL up-front

88bcc7e

fixes

45d8208

test removal of tx worker concurrency limit

9c394ad

lightclient reviewed Aug 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

jwasinger added 11 commits August 26, 2025 16:48

wip: refactor state processor

3ef13ca

fix regression

845911f

fix function description comment

ba9e7e2

glamsterdam->amsterdam

d086d0c

move some non-encoding-related code out of bal_encoding.go into bal.go

d3a56e2

general refactors. removing dead code

bdac6e8

more docs around bal reader

defc1c8

add NewPayloadV5 for creating access-list-containing blocks post-amst…

d12a996

…erdam. Enable access list generation in miner post-amsterdam

enable engine_newPayloadV5

e54f653

change BAL balance to uint256.Int

d36ce42

remove ssz encoder tags

0fbc368

jwasinger added 4 commits August 28, 2025 15:43

fix BAL activation logic (only if fork conditions met and activation …

0bf157e

…explicitly requested). fix regression crash

add back account read

60738b7

fix state root calc metric

bbc4da6

only instantiate prestate up-front for accounts which had modifications

52991ed

jwasinger commented Aug 28, 2025

View reviewed changes

jwasinger added 2 commits August 28, 2025 17:51

remove some redundant code in the blockchain

9a42c49

revert dev-mode genesis alloc change

5abce76

some more docs

7d3b230

jwasinger commented Aug 28, 2025

View reviewed changes

gballet reviewed Aug 28, 2025

View reviewed changes

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Uh oh!

Block access list changes - BAL construction, execution and validation #32263

Block access list changes - BAL construction, execution and validation #32263

jwasinger commented Jul 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Jul 23, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Jul 29, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 4, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 13, 2025

Uh oh!

lightclient left a comment

Uh oh!

lightclient Aug 21, 2025

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 27, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

gballet Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

gballet Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Block access list changes - BAL construction, execution and validation #32263

Are you sure you want to change the base?

Block access list changes - BAL construction, execution and validation #32263

Conversation

jwasinger commented Jul 23, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Jul 23, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Jul 29, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 4, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 13, 2025

Uh oh!

lightclient left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

lightclient Aug 21, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 27, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Aug 28, 2025

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

gballet Aug 28, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

gballet Aug 28, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

jwasinger Aug 28, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jwasinger commented Jul 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

jwasinger commented Jul 29, 2025 •

edited

Loading

jwasinger commented Aug 27, 2025 •

edited

Loading