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Based on top of #98, this implements the BIP54 consensus rules.

Each of the 4 mitigations comes with its own unit test in a new src/test/bip54_tests.cpp module. The unit tests can be used to generate JSON test vectors for the BIP (opt-in). For those unit tests that require mainnet blocks, the JSON test vectors were generated separately and included in this PR as data files.

Besides the unit test for each mitigation, this contains a fuzz harness for the sigop accounting logic as well as a functional test which goes over all mitigations in pseudo realistic situations (for instance, mimic a Timewarp attack and a Murch-Zawy attack to demonstrate the new timestamp restrictions would prevent that). The fuzz target for the sigop accounting logic was designed to make it possible to seed it from the BIP test vectors. This branch implements that.

The chains of headers for the timestamp restrictions test vectors were generated using this unit test (note the premined headers to allow modifications without re-generating all headers from scratch). The small chains of blocks for the coinbase restrictions test vectors were generated using this unit test.

theStack and others added 28 commits October 19, 2025 09:39
In the assumeutxo functional tests, the final test case with alternated UTxO data tests the error
raised when deserializing a snapshot that contains a coin with an amount not in range (<0 or
>MAX_MONEY).

The current malleation uses an undocumented byte string and offset which makes it hard to maintain.
In addition, the undocumented offset is set surprisingly high (39 bytes is well into the
serialization of the amount which starts at offset 36). Similarly the value is surprisingly small,
presumably one was adjusted for the other. But there is no comment explaining how they were chosen,
why not in a clearer manner and what they are supposed to represent.

Instead replace this seemingly magic value with a clear one, MAX_MONEY + 1, serialize the whole
value for the amount field at the correct offset, and document the whole thing for the next person
around.
This test case is brittle as it asserts a specific error string, when the error string depends on
data in the snapshot not controlled by the test (i.e. not injected by the test before asserting
the error string). This can be fixed in a more involved way as per Bitcoin Core PR 32117, but since
this PR is now closed in Core, in the meantime just disable the brittle test in inquisition (see
discussion in Bitcoin Inquisition PR 90).
We don't set the nSequence as it will be set directly in the block template generator in a following
commit.
The Consensus Cleanup soft fork proposal includes enforcing that coinbase transactions set their
locktime field to the block height, minus 1 (as well as their nSequence such as to not disable the
timelock). If such a fork were to be activated by Bitcoin users, miners need to be ready to produce
compliant blocks at the risk of losing substantial amounts mining would-be invalid blocks. As miners
are unfamously slow to upgrade, it's good to make this change as early as possible.

Although Bitcoin Core's GBT implementation does not provide the "coinbasetxn" field, and mining
pool software crafts the coinbase on its own, updating the Bitcoin Core mining code is a first step
toward convincing pools to update their (often closed source) code. A possible followup is also to
introduce new fields to GBT. In addition, this first step also makes it possible to test future
Consensus Cleanup changes.

The changes to the seemingly-unrelated RBF tests is because these tests assert an error message
which may vary depending on the txid of the transactions used in the test. This commit changes the
coinbase transaction structure and therefore impact the txid of transactions in all tests.

The change to the "Bad snapshot" error message in the assumeutxo functional test is because this
specific test case reads into the txid of the next transaction in the snapshot and asserts the error
message based it gets on deserializing this txid as a coin for the previous transaction. As this
commit changes this txid it impacts the deserialization error raised.
This encapsulates the soft fork configuration logic as set by the `-testactivationheight` (for
buried deployments) and `-vbparams` (for version bits deployments) options which for the moment
are regtest-only, in order to make them available on other networks as well in the next commit.

Can be reviewed using git's --color-moved option.
This allows to set `-testactivationheight` and `-vbparams` on all networks instead of exclusively
on regtest.
Prior commits are preparatory work. Following commits is the implementation of BIP54.
Move the function that checks whether a transaction respects the BIP54 sigops rule to the
consensus folder (along with the accompanying constant), as it will be made consensus-critical
in the next commit. Can be reviewed with git's --color-moved option.
When BIP54 is active, make sure transaction in blocks do not violate the BIP54 limit on the
number of potentially-executed legacy sigops.
In Taproot the signature commits to the list of spent outputs.
Test the newly introduced limit with various combinations of inputs and outputs types,
historical transactions, and exercise some implementation-specific edge cases. Record
each test case and optionally write them to disk as JSON to generate the BIP test vectors.
The fuzz target was specifically crafted to support seeding it with the BIP54 test vectors
generated by the unit test in the previous commit.
We are going to introduce the timewarp fix for mainnet with a greater grace period. Rename
the MAX_TIMEWARP value for testnet to differentiate them.
That is, enforce nLockTime be set to height-1 and nSequence not be set to final.
… vectors)

This adds tests exercising the bounds of the checks on the invalid transaction size, for various
types of transactions (legacy, Segwit, bytes in input/output to get to 64 bytes) as well as
sanity checking against some known historical violations.

Thanks to Chris Stewart for digging up the historical violations to this rule.
It's not a standardness limit anymore, it was made consensus.
The previously introduced unit tests extensively test the specific implementation of each
mitigation. This functional test complements them by sanity checking all mitigations in a "black
box" manner. For the added timestamp constraints, it mimicks how they would get exploited (by
implementing pseudo timewarp and Murch-Zawy attacks) and demonstrates those exploits are not
possible anymore after BIP54 activates.
@darosior darosior force-pushed the 2509_inquisition_consensus_cleanup branch from bc95a67 to 8d513a0 Compare October 21, 2025 13:23
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The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

  • #94 (Allow configuring target block time for a signet by benthecarman)
  • #24 (Prevent 64 byte txs at consensus level by ajtowns)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

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5 participants