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Technical proposal SIMD-0313 Review

Drop unchained merkle shreds

  1. Idea
  2. Draft
  3. Review
  4. Accept
  5. Implement
  6. Active

Decision brief

Why this proposal matters

As the new shred format is being sent by all clients, this feature deprecates the old shred format.

Source-backed reading aid · source language: EN

Proposal at a glance

What changes

  • As the new shred format is being sent by all clients, this feature deprecates the old shred format.

Stakeholder map

Who is affected

Builders & client teams Medium impact

Any clients still producing blocks using the old shred format will have their shreds ignored on ingest.

Action requirement unknown
Validators & operators Impact unknown

No proposal-specific evidence was found for this group.

Action requirement unknown
Users & stakers Impact unknown

No proposal-specific evidence was found for this group.

Action requirement unknown
Governance & ecosystem Impact unknown

No proposal-specific evidence was found for this group.

Action requirement unknown

Exact source revision

Full proposal document

Source-language document. Technical identifiers and evidence remain unchanged. f1f6c8b05dc2

Summary

As the new shred format is being sent by all clients, this feature deprecates the old shred format.

Motivation

It is inconvinient to support both formats, and upcoming consensus changes (alpenglow) expect all shreds to be of the chained variety.

New Terminology

N/A

Detailed Design

The chained merkle shred variant, adds an additional field to Data and Coding shreds. It adds the Merkle root of the previous erasure batch after the data buffer or erasure coded shard respectively, before the merkle proof:

// Layout: {common, data} headers | data buffer
//     | [Merkle root of the previous erasure batch if chained]
//     | Merkle proof
//     | [Retransmitter's signature if resigned]
// The slice past signature till the end of the data buffer is erasure coded.
// The slice past signature and before the merkle proof is hashed to generate
// the Merkle tree. The root of the Merkle tree is signed.

// Layout: {common, data} headers | data buffer
//     | [Merkle root of the previous erasure batch if chained]
//     | Merkle proof
//     | [Retransmitter's signature if resigned]
// The slice past signature till the end of the data buffer is erasure coded.
// The slice past signature and before the merkle proof is hashed to generate
// the Merkle tree. The root of the Merkle tree is signed.

Additionally in the common shred header, the first 4 bits of the shred variant field are reserved to specify the shred variant. The second bit indicates if this shred is of the chained merkle shred variant.

If drop_unchained_merkle_shreds: 5KLGJSASDVxKPjLCDWNtnABLpZjsQSrYZ8HKwcEdAMC8 is active, then any shred with the second bit of the shred variant as zero will be dropped on ingest.

Alternatives Considered

None

Impact

Any clients still producing blocks using the old shred format will have their shreds ignored on ingest.

Security Considerations

None

Backwards Compatibility

This feature is not backwards compatible.

Evidence graph

Related proposals and rollout

One or more sources are unavailable.

Upstream review record

Upstream discussion & review

One or more sources are unavailable.

simd.watch community discussion · SIMD-0313

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Provenance

Evidence & technical details

Rollout or chain data, source revisions, freshness and integrity.
3

SIMD

Deployment Status

Document lifecycleReview
CategoryCore protocol
Devnetactive Epoch 914
Testnetactive Epoch 811
Mainnet-Betaactive Epoch 821
5KLGJSASDVxKPjLCDWNtnABLpZjsQSrYZ8HKwcEdAMC8

Exact source revision

Sources & integrity

  • Proposal document pinned_commit_blob
    f1f6c8b05dc205552d3c290a854a438392701107
  • simd-document document · stale · Oct 18, 2026
    f1f6c8b05dc205552d3c290a854a438392701107

One or more sources are unavailable.

One or more sources are unavailable.