Argument-0006: Retention at Rank I

Member details

• Matrix username: @michal:parity.io
• Polkadot address: 14T9NGF7LdCY7SK2j6oNXmB9NqfKYyrxBChUvYRjtFdvZBMo
• Current rank: 1
• Date of initial induction: 2024/06/02
• Date of last report: 2025/12/03
• Area(s) of Expertise/Interest: Substrate node ,Transaction Pool, ChainSpec/GenesisConfig

Reporting period

• Start date: 2025/12/03
• End date: 2026/03/05

Argument

During this period I continued to deepen my expertise in Substrate node internals, specifically around block production, storage proofs, and the transaction pool.

The PoV size reclaim fix for issue #6020 remains under review. This work spans runtime, state machine, and trie layers — requiring cross-cutting understanding of how storage proofs flow through the stack and how they impact performance. To formalize the interface changes it introduces, I submitted RFC-158: Introduce v2 of storage_proof_size Host Function.

I performed a thorough review of the Block Bundling Node Side PR, which is a substantial change to block production mechanics. The review surfaced minor code maintainability improvements that I explored on my fork: BlockProductionSchedule and BlockImportAuxiliaryData removal.

As part of on-boarding to the PolkaJam implementation, I have been building familiarity with the JAM protocol through hands-on work on jamtart — a testing and benchmarking tool for JAM nodes. My main focus has been observability: the JAM toaster had limited tooling for protocol-level metrics, making debugging difficult. To address this I worked on events streaming, preliminary Grafana dashboards, database layer performance, and a JIP-3 telemetry stress testing tool for validating telemetry server capacity. As a side project, I also built jam-orbit (demo), an educational toy for visualising JAM validator activity.

The fork-aware transaction pool continues in maintenance mode. I investigated and filed Stuck transactions on Paseo Asset Hub, uncovering interesting edge cases around ETH transaction handling. I also participated in DevOps alert triage for asset-hub-polkadot reliability.

Voting record

Misc

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