midnight-storage

Storage

Midnight is built on the Polkadot SDK (Substrate) and uses ParityDB as its default database backend.

Storage stack

flowchart TB
  subgraph Runtime["Runtime execution"]
    STF["State transition function (WASM)"]
    PM["pallet-midnight + other pallets"]
  end

  subgraph Trie["State layer"]
    MPT["Patricia-Merkle trie"]
    T2H["twoxhash — storage key generation"]
    MPT --- T2H
  end

  subgraph Persist["Persistence"]
    PDB["ParityDB — key-value store"]
  end

  STF --> PM
  PM --> MPT
  MPT --> PDB
  MPT --> Commit["State root commitment per block"]

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ParityDB

ParityDB is a fast key-value store designed for blockchain workloads.

• Stores all on-chain state.
• Default backend for Substrate/Polkadot SDK chains including Midnight.
• Optimized for high write throughput during block import and state commits.

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Patricia-Merkle trie

The trie is the underlying data structure for state commitments.

Property	Benefit
Merkle structure	Tamper-evident state root per block
Inclusion proofs	Efficient verification of contract state, balances, etc.
Incremental updates	Only changed paths recomputed per block

Canonical ledger state from runtime pallets (including pallet-midnight) is organized in this trie and persisted via ParityDB.

flowchart LR
  BlockN["Block N state root"] --> Root["Trie root hash"]
  Root --> Leaf1["Storage item A"]
  Root --> Leaf2["Storage item B"]
  Root --> Leaf3["Contract state …"]
  Query["RPC / light client"] --> Proof["Merkle inclusion proof"]
  Proof --> Leaf2

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twoxhash (storage keys)

twoxhash generates storage keys within the trie.

Aspect	Detail
Type	Non-cryptographic hash
Purpose	Fast internal key-value lookups
Properties	Speed, low collision rate
Not for	Security-sensitive hashing (use Blake2-256)

twoxhash significantly improves trie performance for map lookups without the cost of cryptographic hashing on every key derivation.

See midnight-cryptography/ for the full hash/signature split.

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State commit flow

Every block:

1. Runtime executes transactions and updates pallet storage.
2. Changed trie nodes are computed; state root is derived.
3. Midnight Ledger commitment is persisted alongside standard Substrate state (pallet-midnight).
4. ParityDB persists the updated trie backing store.

sequenceDiagram
  participant RT as Runtime
  participant Trie as Patricia-Merkle trie
  participant PM as pallet-midnight
  participant DB as ParityDB

  RT->>Trie: Apply storage writes (twoxhash keys)
  RT->>PM: Commit ledger state
  Trie->>Trie: Compute new state root
  PM->>DB: Persist ledger commitment
  Trie->>DB: Persist trie nodes

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Querying storage

Access path	Use case
state_getStorage (RPC)	Raw storage key reads
midnight_contractState (RPC)	Contract-specific state
Indexer GraphQL	Application-friendly contract/event queries

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Related skills

• midnight-onchain-logic/ — what gets written to storage
• midnight-cryptography/ — Blake2-256 vs twoxhash
• midnight-rpc/ — reading state via JSON-RPC
• midnight-transactions/ — how txs trigger storage updates