Previously: flightofthefox hardened the VM to reject invalid constructions at build time, formalized vaults and proofs, and was mid-flight on the proof-and-authorization presenting paths.
This week the Radix network suffered a major VM-level exploit, sending shockwaves through the community. flightofthefox stayed focused on the code, building the network's first real garbage-collection system and tightening transaction signing — while being transparent about protecting Hyperscale's runway and sketching how a future migration would work.
+4.1k −711
-80% vs last wk
lines changed
Commits / day
peak 18/day · 2/7 days active
Momentum
Lines changed / week
last 8 weeks
95% Rust2% Docs2% Specs1% Config
What flightofthefox built
Unreachable state, swept clean
flightofthefox built a garbage-collection system: nullifiers track state that nothing can reach, grouped by expiry buckets so each block retires exactly what's due. The network can now reclaim storage automatically.
→ see “The Library” on hyperscale.rsIntents declare their network
Transaction intents now carry signed headers naming which network they're for and how long they're valid — stopping cross-network replay and tightening each intent's time window to the narrowest bound.
→ see “The Journey” on hyperscale.rsThe bottom line
Standout change
The substate sweep gives the network its first real garbage collection — automatically tracking and removing state that nothing can reach anymore.
What's next
Likely next: finishing the intent-signing and network-validation paths, and integrating the substate sweep into the shard's execution lifecycle.
Heard in the chat
The mood: The Radix network hack dominated all conversation, with debate over relaunching vs. migrating and flightofthefox transparently liquidating XRD to protect Hyperscale's runway.
“hard to hyperscale when you're homeress”
— flightofthefox, in the community Telegram
flightofthefox explained
Sharding localizes failures
One shard halting doesn't impact others, so liveness impact is localized. Prolonged outages get noted by the beacon chain, which rotates the whole committee if needed.
Migration to Xi'an
You'd dump Babylon state at a predetermined epoch, transform it, and load it at Xi'an genesis — same as Olympia to Babylon. The tricky bit is contracts need recompilation.
VM design comes first
The absolute number one priority is building an optimal VM perfectly suited to Hyperscale and sharding. Primitives kept from Scrypto are there because the ideas were genuinely good.
Formal verification limits
You verify smaller models in specialized languages, not the full code. It's not a silver bullet, but having invariants written down makes bugs far less likely.
This week's concept
The Library— The moving day that never happensThe bulk of this week built the state tree's cleanup machinery — tracking, indexing, and removing state that nothing can reach anymore.
hyperscale.rs/library Jargon, decoded
Nullifier — A marker the system uses to track state that should eventually be removed once it's no longer reachable.
Substate sweep — The network's automatic garbage collection: finding and removing state entries that nothing can reach anymore.
Expiry bucket — A way of grouping state items by the block height at which they should be cleaned up, so each block processes them efficiently.
Where the work landed
substate sweep and nullifier storage
intent signing and network validation
nullifier and sweep data structures
Reference — concept map, roadmap & links▾
The full picture
The ClockConsensus-attested time across independent shards.
The CensusThe leaderless beacon of validators, stake and shards.
The OverlapWhy two conflicting blocks can never both commit.
The GeneralsAll-or-nothing cross-shard commits, computed not voted.
The ArchiveEvery published byte is preserved or provably expired.
The LibraryAll state in one merkle tree; a shard is a subtree.
The WillHow in-flight transactions settle when a shard dies.
The LotteryRandom, ever-moving committees; proven cheats are jailed.
The TriageUnder overload, urgent traffic never waits for bulk.
The GovernorValidator entry is re-priced every epoch, like a market.
The Crash LabThe simulator that replays any failure byte-for-byte.
The ProofProving safety with maths, not just tests.
The AsterisksEvery design's trade-offs — including Hyperscale's own.
The road to mainnet
✓ M1
Adaptive Sharding
~4 mo
Now: Milestone 2 · Radix Engine — Week 5 · ~month 1 of 5 · 23%. Since day one: 4,023 commits — one developer, fully in public.
Links
Questions? flightofthefox is always happy to discuss in the community Telegram.
Written by AI from public commits, the community chat and hyperscale.rs — may contain mistakes. · generated 2026-09-07