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feat(sequencer): catchup from base#3057

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feat(sequencer): catchup from base#3057
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julien/catchup-base

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Closes: #3016

Opus did a pretty good job. I'll be improving it.

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The latest Buf updates on your PR. Results from workflow CI / buf-check (pull_request).

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✅ passed⏩ skipped✅ passed✅ passedFeb 17, 2026, 9:43 PM

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Claude finished @julienrbrt's task in 2m 33s —— View job


Code Review

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Summary

This PR introduces a catch-up mechanism for the single sequencer, allowing it to replay missed DA epochs after downtime. The overall approach — entering catch-up mode, draining forced-inclusion transactions epoch-by-epoch, and incrementally advancing DAHeight in the syncer — is sound and well-motivated. The coverage of tests is strong. Below are issues found at varying severity levels.


Critical / High

1. currentDAEndTime has a data race (pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go:71,370,482)

currentDAEndTime is a plain time.Time struct, not an atomic value. It is written in fetchNextDAEpoch (line 482) and read in GetNextBatch (line 370). While in the current call path both happen on the same goroutine, isCatchingUp() is a public-ish method and the sequencer's exported fields suggest future external callers. Even today, the race detector will flag any concurrent GetNextBatch call that overlaps fetchNextDAEpoch because time.Time is a struct with multiple fields and reads are not atomic.

Use a sync.Mutex or sync/atomic.Pointer[time.Time] to protect this field. The catchUpState atomic.Int32 correctly uses atomics, but currentDAEndTime does not follow the same pattern.

// Option A: atomic pointer
currentDAEndTime atomic.Pointer[time.Time]

// Option B: protect with a dedicated mutex
mu               sync.Mutex
currentDAEndTime time.Time

2. Monotonic timestamp scheme is fragile for large epochs (pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go:373-377)

timestamp = daEndTime.Add(-time.Duration(remainingForcedTxs) * time.Millisecond)

This works correctly when the number of forced txs per epoch is small, but it produces timestamps before the epoch start time if an epoch contains thousands of transactions. For example, an epoch with 10,000 forced txs would assign epochEndTime - 10s to the first block, which could precede the previous epoch's end time, violating monotonicity across epochs. This is particularly dangerous for high-throughput force-inclusion namespaces.

Consider clamping the computed timestamp to be at least max(prevBlockTimestamp + 1ns, daEndTime - N*1ms), or deriving the jitter from epoch duration divided by tx count instead of a fixed 1ms per tx.

3. Syncer DAHeight advancement may converge too slowly for large epoch sizes (block/internal/syncing/syncer.go:784-802)

The syncer advances DAHeight by one epoch per block during catch-up. If an epoch spans 1000 DA heights and catch-up produces one block per epoch, the syncer needs 1000 TrySyncNextBlock calls to converge. This is functionally correct but the comment says "advance by one epoch" while the code computes nextEpochStart = epochEnd + 1. For an epoch of size 100 starting at height 200 (epochEnd = 299), nextEpochStart = 300, which does advance by one epoch — this is correct. However, there's no explicit test of this path in the syncer tests.


Medium

4. isCatchingUp() is unexported but accessed in tests via same-package tests (pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go:429)

The method is lowercase (isCatchingUp), which means external packages cannot observe catch-up state. If other components (e.g., RPC layer, metrics, monitoring) ever need to query this, they have no interface to do so. Consider promoting to IsCatchingUp() bool and adding it to the sequencer interface, or at minimum making it a diagnostic/metric endpoint. The tests call it directly because they're in the same package — this is fine for now.

5. GetLatestDAHeight check happens inside fetchNextDAEpoch which is also called for empty epochs (pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go:446)

updateCatchUpState is called from fetchNextDAEpoch, which is triggered whenever cachedForcedInclusionTxs is empty. After the epoch completes normally (all txs consumed), the next call to GetNextBatch sees an empty cache and invokes fetchNextDAEpoch again. Since updateCatchUpState returns early for non-catchUpUnchecked states, this is harmless, but the flow is non-obvious. A comment or early return in GetNextBatch before calling fetchNextDAEpoch when catchUpState == catchUpDone would improve readability.

6. GetLatestDAHeight typo in interface comment (block/internal/da/interface.go:20)

// GetLatestDAHeight returns the latest height available on the DA layer..

Double period (..) — minor but should be cleaned up.

7. Missing coverage for syncer.go DAHeight advancement (Codecov: 22% on block/internal/syncing/syncer.go)

The TrySyncNextBlock large-gap branch (lines 784–802) is the most critical new code in the syncer but has no unit test coverage. Adding a test that simulates a sequencer catch-up scenario — where event.DaHeight is far ahead of state.DAHeight — would prevent regressions on this logic.

8. missedEpochs underflow risk (pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go:567)

missedEpochs := latestEpoch - currentEpoch

Both operands are uint64. The check latestDAHeight <= currentDAHeight (line 555) only ensures the raw heights are ordered, but latestEpoch < currentEpoch is still theoretically possible if CalculateEpochNumber ever returns unexpected values. A defensive check if latestEpoch <= currentEpoch { return } before the subtraction would prevent a silent wrap-around to a huge positive number that incorrectly triggers catch-up.


Low / Nits

9. Inconsistent logger initialization in tests

Some catch-up tests use zerolog.New(zerolog.NewConsoleWriter()) (e.g., TestSequencer_CatchUp_SkipsMempoolDuringCatchUp at line 1313 per Gemini's review), while others correctly use zerolog.New(zerolog.NewTestWriter(t)) or zerolog.Nop(). Standardize on zerolog.New(zerolog.NewTestWriter(t)) across all tests to avoid noisy CI output.

10. The comment "30*time.Second" is referenced in Gemini's review but I don't see it in the current diff

The code appears to have removed the wall-clock 30-second threshold that was in an earlier version (mentioned in Gemini's review). The current implementation uses epoch count (missedEpochs > 1), which is cleaner and avoids the need for a named constant. No action needed.

11. block/internal/da/tracing_test.go mock has a trivial GetLatestDAHeight stub (block/internal/da/tracing_test.go:57)

The mock returns 0, nil unconditionally. The tracing test for GetLatestDAHeight should verify span creation, error propagation, and attribute setting (consistent with how other methods are tested). The new GetLatestDAHeight tracing wrapper in tracing.go:126-138 is currently untested beyond compilation.


Correctness of Core Design

The epoch-based catch-up detection in updateCatchUpState is clean and the single-check-per-lifecycle approach (using catchUpUnchecked → catchUpDone/InProgress) avoids repeated DA queries. The ErrHeightFromFuture as the exit signal is elegant. The syncer's one-epoch-at-a-time DA height advancement correctly threads the needle between forced-inclusion verification correctness and forward progress.

The timestamp jitter scheme (daEndTime - remainingTxs * 1ms) is a reasonable approximation for monotonicity, provided the per-epoch tx count stays below the epoch time in milliseconds — which should hold for any reasonable configuration.

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Summary of Changes

Hello @julienrbrt, I'm Gemini Code Assist1! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request implements a critical "catch-up" feature for the sequencer, designed to enhance its resilience and consistency following periods of inactivity or downtime. By intelligently replaying missed Data Availability (DA) epochs, the sequencer can resynchronize its state, ensuring that all forced inclusion transactions are processed in the correct order and with accurate timestamps, thereby maintaining a consistent view of the blockchain's history, even when operating in a decentralized environment. This mechanism allows the sequencer to seamlessly transition back to normal operation without compromising data integrity.

Highlights

  • Sequencer Catch-up Mechanism: Introduced a new mechanism allowing the sequencer to "catch up" on missed Data Availability (DA) epochs after extended downtime.
  • Forced Inclusion Priority: During catch-up, the sequencer temporarily processes only forced inclusion transactions, ensuring consistency with base sequencing nodes and temporarily skipping mempool transactions.
  • DA Height Synchronization: Modified syncer.go to incrementally advance the DAHeight by one epoch during catch-up, preventing issues with forced inclusion transaction verification.
  • Timestamp Alignment: Block timestamps generated during catch-up are now aligned with the DA epoch's end timestamp for historical accuracy.
  • Comprehensive Testing: Added extensive unit tests covering various catch-up scenarios, including detection, mempool skipping, timestamp usage, exit conditions, and multi-epoch replay.

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Changelog
  • block/internal/syncing/syncer.go
    • Updated the logic for DAHeight updates to handle large discrepancies between event.DaHeight and newState.DAHeight. When a significant gap (more than one epoch) is detected, newState.DAHeight is now advanced by exactly one epoch per block, rather than jumping directly to event.DaHeight. This ensures correct verification of forced inclusion transactions during sequencer catch-up.
    • Added detailed comments explaining the new DAHeight update strategy and its importance for catch-up blocks and forced inclusion verification.
  • pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go
    • Added catchingUp (boolean) and currentDAEndTime (time.Time) to the Sequencer struct to manage the catch-up state and store the DA epoch's end timestamp.
    • Modified GetNextBatch to conditionally skip fetching transactions from the mempool when the sequencer is in catchingUp mode. This ensures that only forced inclusion transactions are included in batches during catch-up.
    • Updated GetNextBatch to use sequencer.currentDAEndTime as the block timestamp when catchingUp is true, aligning block timestamps with the historical DA epoch.
    • Introduced a public IsCatchingUp() method to query the sequencer's current catch-up status.
    • Modified fetchNextDAEpoch to store the forcedTxsEvent.Timestamp in currentDAEndTime and to call a new updateCatchUpState method to manage the catchingUp flag. It also now exits catch-up mode if StatusHeightFromFuture is returned by the DA client.
    • Implemented a new private method updateCatchUpState that determines whether the sequencer should be in catch-up mode based on the timestamp of the fetched DA epoch. It enters catch-up if the epoch timestamp is significantly in the past (more than one epoch's wall-clock duration) and exits if it's recent.
  • pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer_test.go
    • Added a comprehensive suite of tests (TestSequencer_CatchUp_...) to validate the new catch-up functionality. These tests cover:
    • Detection of old epochs and entering catch-up mode.
    • Skipping mempool transactions during catch-up.
    • Using DA epoch timestamps for blocks during catch-up.
    • Exiting catch-up mode when the DA head is reached (either a recent epoch or HeightFromFuture).
    • Scenarios where catch-up is not triggered (recent epoch, no forced inclusion configured).
    • Multi-epoch replay scenarios.
    • Correct advancement of the internal checkpoint (DAHeight) during catch-up.
Activity
  • The pull request addresses and closes issue https://github.com/evstack/ev-node/issues/3016.
  • The author indicates that this work builds upon a previous attempt by "Opus", aiming for improvement.
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codecov bot commented Feb 9, 2026

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 64.86486% with 39 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 61.23%. Comparing base (cf5565e) to head (bef0bef).

Files with missing lines Patch % Lines
block/internal/syncing/syncer.go 22.22% 13 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
block/internal/da/tracing.go 0.00% 10 Missing ⚠️
block/internal/da/client.go 0.00% 9 Missing ⚠️
pkg/sequencers/single/sequencer.go 91.89% 4 Missing and 2 partials ⚠️
Additional details and impacted files
@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #3057      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   61.16%   61.23%   +0.07%     
==========================================
  Files         113      113              
  Lines       11444    11550     +106     
==========================================
+ Hits         7000     7073      +73     
- Misses       3655     3687      +32     
- Partials      789      790       +1     
Flag Coverage Δ
combined 61.23% <64.86%> (+0.07%) ⬆️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

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Code Review

This pull request introduces a robust catch-up mechanism for the sequencer, designed to handle restarts after extended downtime. While the overall approach for consuming and verifying catch-up blocks in the syncer, including the incremental advancement of DAHeight, is well-implemented and tested, the implementation of catch-up mode in the single sequencer has significant flaws. Specifically, it produces non-monotonic block timestamps when multiple blocks are generated for a single DA epoch or when empty epochs are encountered, which will likely cause the execution layer to reject blocks and halt the chain. Additionally, there is a data race on the new catch-up state fields due to a lack of synchronization primitives. Minor suggestions for code clarity and testing experience were also noted.

Comment on lines 362 to 365
timestamp := time.Now()
if c.catchingUp && !c.currentDAEndTime.IsZero() {
timestamp = c.currentDAEndTime
}
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security-high high

During catch-up mode, the sequencer uses the timestamp from the last fetched DA epoch as the block timestamp. However, multiple blocks can be produced for a single DA epoch (e.g., if the epoch contains many transactions that don't fit in one block). In this case, all blocks produced for that epoch will have the exact same timestamp (c.currentDAEndTime). Furthermore, if an empty DA epoch is encountered, c.currentDAEndTime is not updated, causing the next block to reuse the timestamp from the previous non-empty epoch.

Most blockchain execution layers (like EVM) require that each new block has a timestamp strictly greater than its parent. If the sequencer produces multiple blocks with the same timestamp, the execution layer will reject them, halting the block production process and causing a Denial of Service.

Comment on lines 60 to 63
catchingUp bool
// currentDAEndTime is the DA epoch end timestamp from the last fetched epoch.
// Used as the block timestamp during catch-up to match based sequencing behavior.
currentDAEndTime time.Time
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security-medium medium

The fields catchingUp and currentDAEndTime are accessed concurrently without proper synchronization. GetNextBatch and fetchNextDAEpoch (which update these fields) can be called by the block production loop, while IsCatchingUp() can be called concurrently by other components (e.g., RPC, monitoring, or metrics).

In Go, concurrent read/write access to non-atomic fields is a data race, which leads to undefined behavior. Specifically, a race on time.Time (which is a struct) can result in a corrupted timestamp being read, potentially leading to invalid blocks and a Denial of Service.

Comment on lines 533 to 535
if catchUpThreshold < 30*time.Second {
catchUpThreshold = 30 * time.Second
}
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medium

The value 30*time.Second is used as a minimum threshold for the catch-up logic. To improve readability and maintainability, consider defining this as a named constant at the package level, for example: const minCatchUpThreshold = 30 * time.Second, and using that constant here. This makes the intent of the value clearer and centralizes its definition.

// This test uses maxBytes to limit how many txs are fetched, triggering the unprocessed txs scenario.
func TestSequencer_CatchUp_DetectsOldEpoch(t *testing.T) {
ctx := context.Background()
logger := zerolog.New(zerolog.NewConsoleWriter())
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medium

Using zerolog.New(zerolog.NewConsoleWriter()) in tests can lead to verbose output in the console during test runs. It's generally better to use a logger that integrates with the testing framework, such as zerolog.New(zerolog.NewTestWriter(t)), which only shows logs for failed tests, or zerolog.Nop() if logs are not needed. This practice is followed in other new tests in this file (e.g., TestSequencer_CatchUp_UsesDATimestamp). Applying this consistently would improve the developer experience. This comment also applies to lines 1309, 1457, and 1676.

Suggested change
logger := zerolog.New(zerolog.NewConsoleWriter())
logger := zerolog.New(zerolog.NewTestWriter(t))

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[FEATURE] Sequencer catchup on restart from base

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