Finalize research for 0.3

[lrettig]

Roughly in order of priority and planned task sequence:

• Unified Content Blocks #100 is an enabler for transaction selection. There's an epic for it with dev tasks and a placeholder SMIP.
• NetworkID / ChainID / ProtocolID #42: SMIP is complete. Transaction syntax requires this.
• Genesis nonce scheme #104 (generalized nonces, inside-the-VM): design is mostly complete but SMIP is still a placeholder.
• Outstanding SVM design questions for genesis #108
• Address size and format #106
• Finalize design: State database/data structure #13 (binary trie?)
• Transaction Syntax / Encoding #43 Got research feedback. Depends on serialization question and nonce design. Need to rewrite SMIP to reflect final design.
• Transaction selection #14 (See also Transaction Selection SMIPS#50): There is a draft SMIP, but it needs to be updated with the latest understanding of unified content blocks, and a few sections need to be filled in.
• conservative balance design
• Transaction Processing #10 (See also Transaction Processing SMIPS#37): There is a SMIP but it's incomplete and there are a number of outstanding questions related to: criteria for gossip propagation/mempool admittance and eviction, conservative balances, nonce design, transaction selection, etc.
  • mempool management: admittance and eviction criteria
• End-to-end recommended/default inside-the-VM transaction handling
  • nonce? deduplication, invalidation
  • verify
  • constructor
  • others?
• Rewards mathematics #5 (See also Rewards and incentives SMIPS#38): There is a SMIP but still a few open questions involving: layer vs. epoch smoothing, base fees/miner incentive fees, fee maturation, sorting transactions, transaction receipts.
• Account abstraction/unification #3 (See also Account Unification SMIPS#49): There is a complete SMIP but still a number of open questions involving: transaction format, signing, fixed gas mode, funding, SVM API, nonce design.
  • Consider alternatives to account unification #105
• Receipts, events, logs design #8 (See also Receipts, events, and logs (WIP) SMIPS#39): There is only a placeholder SMIP. A complete SMIP needs to be written.
• Optimized self-healing #93: Research has discussed better algorithms and data structures but has not yet delivered a final recommendation. Not 100% sure whether this is essential for genesis, but, given our nonce scheme, it would be very nice to have.
• Transaction atomic batching #99: Just a placeholder issue, no SMIP. Not terribly complex, but there are still a few outstanding questions. Nice to have, not absolutely essential for genesis.
• Mesh data sync (SMIP: mesh data sync SMIPS#51): mostly already implemented (@countvonzero)
• Mesh state sync (SMIP: mesh state sync SMIPS#60): mostly done research-wise (@countvonzero)

[lrettig]

Closing in favor of https://github.com/orgs/spacemeshos/projects/22