Missing Merkle Leaves Causing Proof Retrieval Failure with espresso-dev-node

[ImJeremyHe]

We’ve encountered a potential bug where espresso-dev-node appears to miss certain leaves, resulting in the failure to retrieve Merkle proofs.

Steps to Reproduce

To replicate the issue, run the end-to-end integration test on this branch using the following command:

go test -v -count=1 -timeout 25m -run ^TestEspressoE2E$ github.com/offchainlabs/nitro/system_tests

This test initiates an L1 instance and then starts the Espresso dev node based on that L1.

Observed Behavior

During the test, the following warning appears in the logs:

WARN [11-13|10:40:56.740] error posting batch                      err="error adding hotshot block merkle proof to justification: error fetching the block merkle proof for validated height 57 and leaf height 42. Request failed with error request failed with status 404 and body {\"MerklizedState\":{\"source\":{\"Query\":{\"source\":\"NotFound\"}}}}"

This indicates that while the test can retrieve the Merkle root height (57 for height 42) from the light client contract, it receives a 404 error when attempting to fetch the corresponding Merkle proof.

It appears that the dev node may be failing to update the state in the database correctly.

Relevant API Responses

• http://localhost:41000/v0/block-state/block-height always returns 4
• http://localhost:41000/v0/availability/leaf/5/5 returns an empty list
• http://localhost:41000/v0/availability/header/5 returns a 404 error

Temporary Solution

As a workaround, we added a 10-second wait for the L1 in this commit. However, the precise relationship between L1 and the dev node remains unclear.