Blocks above the newest checkpoint cannot be anchored, so the header from
the primary server is now compared with the one from a second server taken
from the hardcoded bootstrap list. A disagreement at 3+ blocks of depth
aborts the sync; a shallower one leaves the proof unverified until the next
sync; with no reachable witness behaviour is unchanged. A bounded
proof-of-work check was evaluated and rejected. See ADR 0042.
With proof of work skipped, chaining headers from a checkpoint up to a
transaction's block proves nothing: a server can fabricate a header and
fake headers after a real checkpoint. The header must now hash-chain up to
the nearest checkpoint at or above its height, whose hash is hardcoded.
This also anchors heights below the first checkpoint. The cached anchor
state is renamed AnchoredDownTo and caches without it are re-verified
once. Blocks above the newest checkpoint remain a documented limit.
See ADR 0040.
After the handshake the wallet checks server.features genesis_hash and,
when the profile has checkpoints, the header at the highest checkpoint
not above the server's tip (mainnet shares Bitcoin's genesis, so the
checkpoint is what tells the chains apart). A server on another chain is
refused with WrongChainException and the next candidate is tried. Used by
the GUI, peer discovery, the CLI and the server probe. See ADR 0036.
Empty header range during checkpoint anchoring, send-all limits, SyncCache
roundtrip, corrupted config, derivation edge cases, spendability
boundaries, unit formatting, loader errors, in-flight cap, disposal under
load and wallet-lock contention. Also raises the synchronizer partial-result
timeouts so they hold under load.
_anchoredUpTo tracked which heights were already proven to hash-chain
back to a checkpoint, but only in memory: every app restart re-walked
and re-verified the whole header chain from the checkpoint even when
the header bytes themselves were already cached on disk, dominating
reconnect time on large wallets. Round-trip it through SyncCache like
the other sync caches (RawTxHex/VerifiedAt/BlockHeaders).
Balance/history now render as soon as tx downloads finish instead of
blocking on every historical Merkle proof, critical for mobile where
proof-checking can take much longer than the download itself. Proofs
continue to be checked in the background and each tx's Verified flag
catches up progressively; header ranges are now fetched in batches
(blockchain.block.headers) instead of one call per header to keep this
fast over high-latency links.
Coin selection (UtxoSpendability.IsSpendable) refuses to spend a UTXO
until its Merkle proof is actually checked, regardless of confirmation
count, so a server that fabricates a confirmed balance can get it
displayed early but never spent before the forgery is caught. The disk
cache only ever persists the fully-verified end state of a sync.
UI surfaces the new PendingVerificationSats/SpendableSats split with a
"verifying..." badge, and the sync save now runs off the UI thread to
avoid freezing on slower hardware.
Two branches of WalletSynchronizer had no coverage: the early-return in
AnchorToCheckpointAsync when a range is already memoized (a second sync
with a tx below the previously-anchored height must not re-walk the
header chain), and the void RetryOnBusyAsync overload used by the
transaction-download tasks (only the generic <T> overload, exercised by
get_history, had a test).
Every configured ChainProfile sets SkipPowValidation=true, so the
hash<=target branch (taken only when a future profile disables the
skip) had never run in the suite. Added a genesis-hash-satisfies-target
case and a tampered-bits case that pushes the target below the hash.
ChainProfiles.Mainnet.Checkpoints was an empty array with a "populate
before release" TODO, and even BlockHeaderInfo.MatchesCheckpoint()/
IsValidChild() — the methods meant to enforce it — were never called
anywhere in WalletSynchronizer. So on this LWMA chain, where PoW can't
be recomputed client-side (SkipPowValidation), a malicious or
eclipsing server could hand back any internally-consistent 80-byte
header for a Merkle proof: nothing tied it to the real Palladium
chain.
Populated Mainnet.Checkpoints with 24 real [height, hash, bits]
checkpoints (every 20,000 blocks + one near tip), pulled via RPC from
a fully-synced palladiumd. Testnet/Regtest are left empty (no node
available to verify against, and WalletSynchronizer already treats a
missing checkpoint as a no-op, so this is safe, just unanchored).
Added WalletSynchronizer.AnchorToCheckpointAsync: for every header
used in a Merkle proof, downloads the intervening headers back to the
nearest checkpoint at or below that height and verifies an unbroken
prev-hash chain terminating in the checkpoint's exact hash, finally
wiring up the previously-dead MatchesCheckpoint/IsValidChild. Verified
ranges are memoized in-memory per sync session to avoid re-walking.
Updated SECURITY.md and USERGUIDE.md to describe what is actually
enforced now (previously the guide deliberately avoided promising
checkpoint anchoring, since the array was empty).
ElectrumClient, WalletSynchronizer, TransactionInspector, CertificatePinStore
and peer discovery went from 0% coverage to close to full coverage, all
against the fake ElectrumX server:
- ElectrumClient: request/response correlation under load, server errors,
notifications, disconnection, cancellation, SSL handshake with TOFU pinning.
- WalletSynchronizer: gap-limit scanning, UTXO/history reconstruction,
unconfirmed/immature balances, busy-retry, disk-cache reuse, and the
security-critical path where a lying server fails Merkle verification and
the sync must abort.
- TransactionInspector: fee calculation from resolved inputs, mine/theirs
attribution, RBF flag, coinbase handling, degraded paths when a previous
transaction can't be resolved.
- CertificatePinStore: TOFU pin/match/mismatch/reset, corrupted-file fallback.
- ServerRegistry: peer discovery and persistence via DiscoverAsync.
- UpdateChecker: release-tag parsing and semver comparison.
Translate every Italian /// XML doc comment, <!-- --> XAML comment, and
// inline comment to English across all source files (Core, App, tests).
Add the language policy to CLAUDE.md (conversation Italian; all code
and docs English). Update one test assertion that checked an Italian
exception message that was also translated.
davide