v1.26.0-exp.2

Release notes

🚧 THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL RELEASE.
We don't recommend running it on your main validator infrastructure. It brings major improvements, but we're still unsure about its downsides and long-term effects. The latest stable version is 1.25.3.

Major highlights

This version brings many performance improvements, the most important being a major state database optimization called Half-path.
This new optimization is not a full path-based storage, but the way it arranges data helps with the performance of block processing and state database size.

Key points

• Block processing is faster by about 40-50%
• Block processing during historical data sync is faster by about 80-100%
• Initial state database size on snap-synced Mainnet nodes reduced by about 25% (archive nodes still to be measured)
• Initial state database growth in the first two weeks has halved and decreased over time. Preliminary testing shows a reduction in database growth to 3 GB per month following the first two weeks, greatly reducing the need for node maintenance and full pruning.

For more details on Half-path, see our blog post.

Backward compatibility

• To fully benefit from this release, you must resync your nodes from scratch.
• Half-path is now the default sync mode for new nodes. If you start this version on a node with an old database schema, it will continue using the old schema without improvements. This is not recommended.

Known issues

• Full pruning doesn't work properly. We're working on improvements, but be aware that using this version requires a database resync from scratch.
• Unusual block processing spikes are still happening but very rarely. We noticed some unusually high spikes when in-memory pruning interferes with block processing. A fix is already in the testing phase but not included in this release.