Casper network v1.4.6 update is an improvement of the storage portion of the Casper node, thus improving resilience and avoiding instability of the network in a future state.
Apply ScratchTrie changes to 1.4.6
Explanation: Through v1.4.5, interstitial data was stored that is no longer needed after processing. This was known tech debt which caused the database on a Casper network node to grow approximately 5.3GB/day. This was causing undue cost for Node operators due to increased disk required for DB. In v1.4.6, we introduce a ScratchTrie approach in which, interstitial data is kept in-memory and not disk, this significantly reduces the disk footprint to about 0.3GB/day. In addition to space savings, elimination of write and read cycles has drastically sped up the auction and payment process (commit step) which takes place at the end of every Era.
Network operators would notice a significant drop in disk usage growth and disk bandwidth.
For all other users of the network(delegators, contract authors et al) this is a no-impact change.
Note: After v1.4.6 activates, we will provide instructions on how to process the node db to reduce the size by removing these interstitial commits.
MainNet Activation - May 20th, 2022
