Utreexo Validation

In the previous section we have seen the Consensus::verify_block_transactions function. It was taking a utxos argument, used to verify that each transaction input satisfies the script of the UTXO it spends, and that transactions spend no more than the sum of input amounts.

However, we have yet to verify that these utxos actually exist in the UTXO set, i.e. check that nobody is spending coins out of thin air. That's what we are going to do inside Consensus::update_acc, and get the updated UTXO set accumulator, with spent UTXOs removed and new ones added.

Recall that Stump is the type of our accumulator, coming from the rustreexo crate. Stump represents the merkle roots of a forest where leaves are UTXO hashes.

Figure 4: A visual depiction of the utreexo forest. To prove that UTXO 4 is part of the set we provide the hash of UTXO 3 and h1. With this data we can re-compute the h5 root, which must be identical. Credit: original utreexo post.

In the function we get the new leaf hashes (the hashes of newly created UTXOs in the block) by calling udata::proof_util::get_block_adds. This function returns the new leaves to add to the accumulator, which exclude two cases:

  1. Created UTXOs that are provably unspendable (e.g. an OP_RETURN output or any output with a script larger than 10,000 bytes).
  2. Created UTXOs spent within the same block.

Finally, we get the updated Stump using its modify method, provided the leaves to add, the leaves to remove and the proof of inclusion for the latter. This method both verifies the proof and generates the new accumulator.

// Path: floresta-chain/src/pruned_utreexo/consensus.rs

// Omitted: impl Consensus {

pub fn update_acc(
    acc: &Stump,
    block: &Block,
    height: u32,
    proof: Proof,
    del_hashes: Vec<sha256::Hash>,
) -> Result<Stump, BlockchainError> {
    let block_hash = block.block_hash();
    // Convert to BitcoinNodeHashes, from rustreexo
    let del_hashes: Vec<_> = del_hashes.into_iter().map(Into::into).collect();

    let adds = udata::proof_util::get_block_adds(block, height, block_hash);

    // Update the accumulator
    let acc = acc.modify(&adds, &del_hashes, &proof)?.0;
    Ok(acc)
}