Module payload_validator 

Types and traits for validating blocks and payloads.

Payload validation flow

BasicEngineValidator::validate_block_with_state is the engine-side entry point for an inserted block or an engine_newPayload payload. It overlaps payload conversion, transaction preparation, cache prewarming, receipt-root computation, state-root computation, and deferred trie input construction wherever those tasks do not depend on each other.

Validation phases

1. Fetch the parent header and spawn payload-convert, which converts payloads into sealed blocks and runs header, parent-header, and pre-execution consensus validation.
2. Build the parent state provider, EVM environment, transaction iterator, lazy ancestor overlay, and optional decoded EIP-7928 block access list (BAL).
3. Prepare the per-block state-root job. The default strategy picks a skipped, synchronous, or sparse-trie job from TreeConfig.
4. Spawn the payload processor. This always prepares transaction conversion and prewarming; a streaming state-root job can provide a sink for prewarm and execution updates.
5. Execute the block. BAL payloads use the parallel BAL execute path only when state caching and BAL parallel execution are enabled. Otherwise the regular executor still builds and validates the BAL before post-execution consensus uses the decoded BAL hash.
6. Stop prewarming, terminate execution caching, spawn hash-post-state, await payload-convert and receipt-root, then run post-execution consensus validation.
7. Resolve the state root by finishing the prepared job. The sparse-trie job falls back to serial computation when the state-root task fails to produce a usable root.
8. Verify the header state root, spawn deferred trie input computation, and return the executed block without waiting for that deferred trie task on the hot path.

Spawned background work

Work	Spawned when	Role	Completion point
payload-convert	parent is known	convert payloads, validate header and body roots	after execution, unless the gas sanity check awaits it earlier
tx-iterator	payload processor setup	convert transactions, using rayon for larger blocks	consumed by regular and BAL execution
prewarm	payload processor setup	warm execution caches; in BAL mode, stream BAL-derived trie targets	stopped after execution, then caching is terminated
proof workers	sparse-trie task setup	fetch trie proofs for sparse trie updates	consumed by the sparse trie task
sparse-trie	sparse-trie task setup	apply execution or BAL updates and compute the state root	awaited by the state-root job
receipt-root	execution start	compute receipt root and logs bloom incrementally	awaited before post-execution consensus
hash-post-state	after execution	hash changed accounts and storage from BundleState	awaited by post-execution validation and root computation
serial-root	sparse trie timeout fallback	race serial state-root computation against the sparse trie task	polled by the sparse-trie job
deferred trie task	after root verification	sort trie data	not awaited by the validation hot path

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant Main as validate_block_with_state
    participant Convert as payload-convert
    participant Tx as tx-iterator
    participant Prewarm as prewarm
    participant Exec as EVM execution
    participant Receipt as receipt-root
    participant Trie as sparse trie and proofs
    participant Hash as hash-post-state
    participant Deferred as deferred trie task

    Main->>Convert: spawn convert and pre-execution validation
    Main->>Main: parent provider, EVM env, optional BAL decode
    Main->>Tx: spawn transaction conversion
    alt sparse-trie job
        Main->>Trie: spawn proof workers and sparse trie
    end
    Main->>Prewarm: spawn transaction, BAL, or skipped prewarm
    Main->>Receipt: spawn receipt root task
    alt BAL path eligible
        Main->>Exec: execute_block_bal
        Prewarm->>Trie: BAL-derived sparse trie updates
    else regular execution
        Tx-->>Exec: recovered transactions in block order
        Main->>Exec: execute_block
        Exec->>Receipt: stream receipts
        Exec->>Trie: stream state hook updates
        Exec->>Exec: rebuild and validate BAL when present
    end
    Main->>Prewarm: stop prewarming and terminate cache
    Main->>Hash: spawn changed-state hashing
    Convert-->>Main: sealed block
    Receipt-->>Main: receipt root and logs bloom
    Main->>Main: post-execution consensus and BAL hash check
    Hash-->>Main: hashed post state
    alt sparse-trie job
        Trie-->>Main: state root and trie updates
    else synchronous or fallback
        Main->>Main: compute serial StateRoot
    end
    Main->>Main: verify header state root
    Main->>Deferred: spawn trie input sorting
    Main-->>Main: return ValidationOutput

Payload attributes validation

During engine_forkchoiceUpdated, PayloadValidator::validate_payload_attributes_against_header checks payload attributes before a payload build job starts. On failure, the engine returns INVALID_PAYLOAD_ATTRIBUTES without rolling back the forkchoice update.

Re-exports

pub use crate::tree::types::ValidationOutcome;

Structs

BasicEngineValidator

A helper type that provides reusable payload validation logic for network-specific validators.

TreeCtx

Context providing access to tree state during validation.

Enums

BlockOrPayload

Enum representing either block or payload being validated.

Traits

EngineValidator

Type that validates the payloads processed by the engine.