The Problem

Hosts running state sync snapshots occasionally encountered a critical startup error:

err="no validator signing info found"

The node would fail to start after syncing from a snapshot, requiring manual intervention.

Root Cause

The issue traces back to iavl-fastnode in Cosmos SDK. When enabled during state sync restoration, it can produce inconsistent validator state data, causing the signing info lookup to fail.

The Fix

PR #799 disables iavl-fastnode by default. Starting from v0.2.10-post6, new nodes will have this parameter set automatically.

For existing nodes experiencing the error:

  1. Stop the node: docker stop node
  2. Edit .inference/config/app.toml: set iavl-disable-fastnode = true
  3. Restart: docker start node

After full synchronization, fastnode can be re-enabled if desired.

Impact

  • Who is affected: Hosts joining via state sync snapshots
  • Severity: Medium — prevents node startup, but has a simple manual fix
  • Action required: None for nodes already running. New installations from v0.2.10-post6 are patched automatically.

This is a post-release patch — no upgrade proposal or chain halt required.