Each layer interacts through clearly defined interfaces, ensuring system modularity and maintainability. The data layer provides efficient state storage and retrieval services for upper layers; the consensus layer handles transaction ordering and network-wide state synchronization; the state layer processes transaction execution and state transitions; the application layer provides flexible deployment environments for various decentralized applications. This layered architecture provides a solid technical foundation for diverse application scenarios while ensuring system security and compatibility.1）Verkle Tree State Storage: While the Merkle Patricia tree used by traditional blockchains excels in cryptographic security, its problem of excessively large proof sizes becomes increasingly prominent as state scale grows exponentially. A typical Ethereum state proof can reach several kilobytes, severely constraining light client feasibility. To fundamentally solve this problem, Vorn Network adopts Verkle trees as the core state storage structure, achieving order-of-magnitude reduction in proof sizes. The core innovation of Verkle trees lies in using vector commitments to replace traditional hash linking. Its technical advantages include:
Vector commitment scheme: Using Pedersen commitments to directly commit to each node’s d child nodes, replacing traditional recursive hash aggregation. This method allows including multiple values in a single commitment, significantly reducing proof path length
Fixed-size proofs: Achieving O(1)-level proof sizes based on Inner Product Arguments, with proof size remaining constant regardless of tree depth, significantly reducing network transmission and verification costs
Shallow tree structure: Through higher branching factors (typically 1024), Verkle tree depth is only a fraction of traditional binary or hexadecimal Merkle trees, reducing storage requirements and providing practical technical support for stateless clients and edge device light nodes
Experimental data shows that compared to traditional Merkle trees, in state trees containing billions of entries, Verkle trees can reduce single state access proof size from an average of 3KB to below 200 bytes, and verification time from milliseconds to microseconds, greatly improving state verification efficiency. This improvement is crucial for implementing true stateless clients, allowing users to verify transaction validity without storing complete state.1）Tiered Storage System: Blockchain data exhibits obvious temporal locality characteristics—the latest data is frequently accessed, while historical data access frequency decays over time. Based on this observation, Vorn Network establishes a refined three-tier storage system, optimizing storage costs while ensuring data integrity:
Hot data: Contains block state data and active contract storage from the past two years, requiring full nodes to store locally to ensure sub-millisecond low-latency access. This data supports daily transaction verification and smart contract execution
Cold archive data: Covers historical blocks over two years old and inactive account states, ensuring persistent availability through distributed backup mechanisms (such as erasure coding) while allowing higher access latency (second-level)
Discardable data: Includes non-critical information such as transaction receipts and logs that can be regenerated from block data. Nodes can autonomously clean based on storage capacity, trading computation for storage space
The system simultaneously provides two-level data management mechanisms, allowing users to choose appropriate storage solutions based on needs:
Long-term data: Critical business data permanently persisted on the blockchain, guaranteed through network-wide consensus, enjoying the highest security level and availability guarantees
Temporary data: Supports economical storage solutions with user-defined retention periods (such as 30 days, 90 days), suitable for temporary states, cache data, and other scenarios, automatically cleaned after expiration, significantly reducing storage costs
This tiered system reduces full node storage requirements by approximately 60% through intelligent data migration strategies while ensuring data availability, enabling devices with ordinary hardware configurations to participate in network maintenance.
