# Argument-0008: Retention at Rank II

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| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Report Date**  | 2026/06/15                                                                     |
| **Submitted by** | Alexandru Gheorghe                                                             |

## Member details

- Matrix username: @alexggh:parity.io
- Polkadot address: 14uA7Vc828e2Q6oL5GBHP9UzTkEvwqbroERwRmucGrLmPuuL
- Current rank: 2
- Date of initial induction: 2024/07/20
- Date of last report: 2026/03/23
- Area(s) of Expertise/Interest: Parachains consensus, statement-store protocol

## Reporting period

- Start date: 2026/03/23
- End date: 2026/06/15

## Argument

During this reporting period my focus has continued to be on making the polkadot-sdk statement-store scalable. My work here is threefold: finalising the v2 protocol design and breaking it down into an implementation plan the wider team can pick up and drive, adding light-node support so light clients like smoldot can use the store, and operating the v1 protocol that's running today, by debugging issues and providing support.

## Statement-store v2

The previous reporting period ended with a draft v2 protocol design that replaces the flood-gossip model, where every node stores all statements and forwards them to all peers, with topic-based DHT routing. During this period, after evaluations using a determining simulator, I finalised the v2 design.

I then broke it down into smaller, independent modules and opened them as a [tracked implementation plan](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues?q=is:issue+author:alexggh+created:2026-04-29). The wider team (Andrei Eres, DenzelPenzel, s0me0ne-unkn0wn and P1sar) has already begun implementing these modules.

## Statement-store light-node support

A key building block of v2 is letting nodes that can't store everything subscribe only to the statements they care about, so I worked on adding light-node support.

On the polkadot-sdk side I implemented [explicit topic affinity](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/11329), where over a new `statement/2` protocol a light client advertises as a bloom filter which topics it's interested in, and peers forward it only the statements matching that filter. On the smoldot side I reviewed the implementation and added support in the web client to use statement-store through smoldot.

## Operating the v1 protocol

Alongside the redesign, I've continued to operate and harden the v1 protocol that's running today. On the debugging side I root-caused a [race between major sync and statement reception](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/11411), where a node that's catching up could silently miss statements its peers were already sending it. I've also improved the live behaviour and observability..

On the tooling side, I moved the benchmarking tooling into a dedicated repo and added [statement-ops-bench](https://github.com/paritytech/statement-store-tools/pull/5), a per-node RPC benchmark for submit, propagation, and subscribe latency. On the client side, I fixed a [subscription teardown leak in the JS SDK](https://github.com/paritytech/triangle-js-sdks/pull/111) found while integrating against the store.

## Other work

Besides the mentioned topics,I'm also providing reviews for my area of expertise in polkadot-sdk, during this reporting period I reviewed [PRs](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pulls?q=is:pr+reviewed-by:alexggh+created:2026-03-23..2026-06-15) spanning statement-store, approval voting, and parachain consensus.

## Voting record

|  Ranks | Activity thresholds | Agreement thresholds | Member's voting activities | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|I  |90%   |N/A   | | |
|II |80%   |N/A   | I have voted on 0 out of 0 referenda in which I was eligible to vote (i.e 100 % voting activity) | There were no referendums available for my rank to vote on. |
|III|70%   |100%  |   |  |
|IV |60%   |90%   |   |  |
|V  |50%   |80%   |   |  |
|VI |40%   |70%   |   |  |

## Misc

- [ ] Question(s):

- [ ] Concern(s):

- [ ] Comment(s):