Merkle Patricia Trie Subtree Generation for Light Client State Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
In distributed ledger systems, particularly blockchain networks, light clients face resource and bandwidth inefficiencies due to the need to maintain and update the entire world-state hash tree, which is complex and data-intensive, even though they only require partial-state information for transactions.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method to generate and update sub-trees of world-state Merkle Patricia Tries (MPTs) by traversing the tree in multiple iterations, marking nodes as account or transition nodes, and creating a sub-tree based on an address list, allowing light clients to receive only the necessary state information, reducing processor and storage requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If light clients maintain the entire world-state hash tree, then they can access complete blockchain state information, but processor and storage requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the complete world-state hash tree into multiple subtrees, where each subtree represents a portion of the blockchain state. Light clients can then selectively maintain only the subtrees relevant to their needs, rather than the entire hash tree. This segmentation reduces storage and processing requirements while still providing access to necessary state information.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and transmits only the specific subtree data that light clients need, rather than requiring them to store and process the complete world-state hash tree. This extraction approach allows light clients to obtain necessary state information with minimal resource consumption.
2Loss of information
If light clients store complete world-state data, then they have full access to account states, but bandwidth and storage efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The world-state hash tree is segmented into multiple subtrees based on account address ranges or other organizational criteria. Light clients receive and store only the subtrees containing accounts they interact with, significantly reducing the quantity of data transferred and stored while maintaining access to necessary account state information.
Solution Approach 2:
Light clients perform partial maintenance of the world-state by storing only a subset of subtrees rather than the complete hash tree. This partial action approach provides sufficient information for their transaction needs while minimizing data transfer and storage requirements.
3Loss of information
If the address list includes all nodes in the world-state MPT, then complete state coverage is achieved, but data redundancy and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The address list is optimized to include only the specific nodes (account addresses) that are relevant to each light client's needs, rather than including all nodes in the world-state MPT. This local quality approach ensures complete coverage of relevant state information while eliminating data redundancy and reducing processing overhead.
Data Source
AI summary
Implementations of this specification include traversing a world-state MPT in multiple iterations, and, at each iteration, for a current node of the world-state MPT, executing one of: marking the current node as an account node and storing an address of the current node in the address list, determining that the current node is an extension node, and moving to a next iteration of the traversal setting the current node to a node referenced by the extension node, and marking the current node as a transition node, and storing an address of the current node in the address list; creating a sub-tree of the world-state MPT based on the address list, a root node of the sub-tree including a root node of the world-state MPT, and one or more child nodes of the sub-tree corresponding to nodes of the world-state MPT having an address stored in the address list.