Stateless Ethereum Syncing - Comparing Beam Sync

This is the topic of my bachelor (undergrad) thesis that I wrote over the course of 2020. It was scientifically sufficient to graduate with this :) If you have any questions or I can be of any assistance, feel free to reach out or raise an Issue.

Contents

1. Introduction

• Overview
• Contributions
• Outline

2. Basics

• Ethereum-Blockchain
• State
• Modified Merkle Patricia Trie
  • Merkle Tree
  • Patricia Trie
  • Modification

3. Stateful Tech Tree

• Theoretical Concept
• Practical Implementation
  • Full Sync Clients
  • Fast Sync Client: Geth
  • Warp Sync Clients: OpenEthereum (a.k.a. Parity)
• Time Complexity Class

4. Stateless Tech Tree

• Theoretical Concept
  • Witness Size + Specification, Size, Indexing, Gas Accounting, Chunking, Stateless Transaction Validation
  • Binary Trie, Overlay Conversion Method
  • Code Merklization
  • Ethereum Virtual Machine Changes
• Praxtical Implementation
  • Beam Sync
  • Clients: Trinity + Nethermind
• Time Complexity Class
• Problems, Opportunities and Vectors of Attack

5. Conclusion

Special thanks to

Jussi Salzwedel, my first examiner. Jason Carver, my second examiner. Christoph Burgdorf who guided me through the whole thought-process and was my mentor and supervisor. Kurt Merbeth who always had an open ear and was immensely helpful in gaining understanding through discussion :)

License

If you want to use any of this, feel free.