Incompatible Value binary serialization format

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
backend

Research direction

Reproduce the issue using the Value::Confidential example and both bincode serialization options shown in the report. Compare the current behavior with v0.16 and inspect the Value serialization changes in PRs 98 and 96. Done means the compatibility problem is resolved and the resulting bytes are verified against the reported v0.16 format.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

It appears that the bincode value fix resulted in a different serialization format compared to before the regression (v0.16).

With current master (fe3e9469618a479de02f8ececf92f9d456fc4c38), the following code:

let commitment = PedersenCommitment::from_slice(&Vec::from_hex("09b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4").unwrap()).unwrap();
let value = Value::Confidential(commitment);

println!("BE bytes: {}", bincode::serialize(&value).unwrap().to_hex());
println!("LE bytes: {}", bincode::DefaultOptions::default().with_little_endian()
    .serialize(&value).unwrap().to_hex());

Results in the following serialization:

BE bytes: 020000000000000002210000000000000009b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4
LE bytes: 02022109b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4

While with v0.16, the following code:

let value = Value::from_commitment(&Vec::from_hex("09b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4").unwrap()).unwrap();

println!("BE bytes: {}", bincode::serialize(&value).unwrap().to_hex());
println!("LE bytes: {}", bincode::DefaultOptions::default().with_little_endian()
    .serialize(&value).unwrap().to_hex());

Results in the following serialization:

BE bytes: 020000000000000009b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4
LE bytes: 0209b88680778d3d5530785ff12bb62e6ac98c7be5a8b9b0ea392e166bf61ea77ee4
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
57
Forks
40
Avg merge
11h 58m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

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