Jan 2, 2025

The bending of the rules pertains to append-only table bodies. There is already a slight bend to this in the case of the two height indexes (simple arrays), as we allow the arrays to shrink during a reorg, and then grow again. In the case of a new prevouts table, the index table for the prevouts (also a simple array) must be written out of order. The height indexes are pure stacks (push/pop only). The block order is dictated by the order of block validation. This technique allows the node to produce a sort of the unsorted validation order at no cost - by just inserting the prevouts reference into the table at the height offset.