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1c8d57eeb7
This PR, a continuation of replaces `historical_roots` with `historical_block_roots`. By keeping an accumulator of historical block roots in the state, it becomes possible to validate the entire block history that led up to that particular state without executing the transitions, and without checking them one by one in backwards order using a parent chain. This is interesting for archival purposes as well as when implementing sync protocols that can verify chunks of blocks quickly, meaning they can be downloaded in any order. It's also useful as it provides a canonical hash by which such chunks of blocks can be named, with a direct reference in the state. In this PR, `historical_roots` is frozen at its current value and `historical_batches` are computed from the merge epoch onwards. After this PR, `block_batch_root` in the state can be used to verify an era of blocks against the state with a simple root check. The `historical_roots` values on the other hand can be used to verify that a constant distributed with clients is valid for a particular state, and therefore extends the block validation all the way back to genesis without backfilling `block_batch_root` and without introducing any new security assumptions in the client. As far as naming goes, it's convenient to talk about an "era" being 8192 slots ~= 1.14 days. The 8192 number comes from the SLOTS_PER_HISTORICAL_ROOT constant. With multiple easily verifable blocks in a file, it becomes trivial to offload block history to out-of-protocol transfer methods (bittorrent / ftp / whatever) - including execution payloads, paving the way for a future in which clients purge block history in p2p. This PR can be applied along with the merge which simplifies payload distribution from the get-go. Both execution and consensus clients benefit because from the merge onwards, they both need to be able to supply ranges of blocks in the sync protocol from what effectively is "cold storage". Another possibility is to include it in a future cleanup PR - this complicates the "cold storage" mode above by not covering exection payloads from start.