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A low‑calorie Block Access Lists (BAL) TL;DR Diet-BAL: a 35% smaller, stripped-down BAL containing: (a) {account→slot} read‑set for I/O prefetch; (b) a levelised dependency graph for execution. Drops per‑edge dependency data and bal_hash. Validators verifies dependency graph and rejects the block its invalid. Problem We want a Block Access Lists that enables I/0 prefetch, enables parallel execution, never makes the worst case slower than serial, is cheap for builders, light for validators, has a reasonably small size without compromising (1)-(3) and, [Bonus] can be pruned out of history The current BAL spec meets (1)–(3) but sends a per‑tx write‑set that validators can already discover; we can skip that payload. ...

This post explores the benefits of explicitly listing invariants as part of a specification. On an unsuspecting New Year’s Eve, the few lines of C code shown below nearly crippled the Internet, raking up half a billion dollars in damages. The heartbleed bug The code in question implements a new “Heartbeat” specification for the TLS encryption protocol, aiming to solve an important bottleneck: establishing a new TLS connection is expensive. The specification proposes that the sender post an arbitrary “heartbeat” message to the recipient. The recipient interprets this as a signal to keep the connection alive and confirms by echoing the message back to the sender. ...

This article moved to EPF.wiki and is thoroughly missed.