[DRAFT][WIP] Code cleanup & docs during audit process

.gitignore

@@ -6,3 +6,6 @@
 
 # Ignore Goland and JetBrains IDE files
 .idea/
+
+# Ignore vscode files
+.vscode

bulk_test.go

@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ func bulkOperations(t *testing.T, operations int, insert int, update int, delete
 			if err != nil && err != ErrKeyNotFound {
 				t.Fatalf("error: %v", err)
 			}
-			kv[ki].val = defaultValue
+			kv[ki].val = defaultEmptyValue
 		}
 	}
 

docs/audit.md

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+# Audit
+
+- [Audit](#audit)
+
+## Pre-Audit Checklist
+
+### Checklist Requirements
+
+Pre-Audit Checklist:
+
+A reminder to provide us with the must haves 3 business days prior to the audit start days to avoid delays:
+
+**Must haves:**
+
+- A URL of the repository containing the source code
+- The release branch / commit hash to be reviewed
+- An explicit list of files in scope and out of scope for the security audit
+- Robust and comprehensive documentation describing the intended functionality of the system
+
+**Nice-to-haves:**
+
+- Clear instructions for setting up the system and run the tests (usually in the README file)
+- Any past audits
+- Any tooling output logs
+- Output generated by running the test suite
+- Test coverage report
+
+Please disregard what may be irrelevant in the above list for this particular audit.
+Reminder that we cannot accept any scope changes during the course of the audit.
+
+And more on audit preparation in this blogpost: https://medium.com/thesis-defense/why-crypto-needs-security-audits-d12f3909ac21 - thanks!
+
+### Checklist Response
+
+**Repository**: https://github.com/pokt-network/smt
+
+- **Branch**: `main`
+- **Hash**: `868237978c0b3c0e2added161b36eeb7a3dc93b0`
+
+**Documentation**
+
+- **Background**: [Relay Mining](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10672)
+- **Technical Documentation**: https://github.com/pokt-network/smt/tree/main/docs
+- _NOTE: we may integrate this into [https://dev.poktroll.com](https://dev.poktroll.com/) (which is out of scope) in the future_
+
+**Files**
+
+- Nothing is explicitly out of scope but the focus should be on the files below
+- The following is a manually filtered list of files after running `tree -P '*.go' -I '*_test.go'`
+
+```bash
+  .
+  ├── errors.go
+  ├── hasher.go
+  ├── kvstore
+  │   ├── badger
+  │   │   ├── errors.go
+  │   │   ├── godoc.go
+  │   │   ├── interface.go
+  │   │   └── kvstore.go
+  │   ├── interfaces.go
+  ├── options.go
+  ├── proofs.go
+  ├── smst.go
+  ├── smt.go
+  ├── types.go
+  └── utils.go
+```
+
+**Makefile**
+
+- Running `make` in the root of the repo shows a list of options
+- This gives access to tests, benchmarks, etc...
+
+```bash
+make
+help                           Prints all the targets in all the Makefiles
+list                           List all make targets
+test_all                       runs the test suite
+test_badger                    runs the badger KVStore submodule's test suite
+mod_tidy                       runs go mod tidy for all (sub)modules
+go_docs                        Generate documentation for the project
+benchmark_all                  runs all benchmarks
+benchmark_smt                  runs all benchmarks for the SMT
+benchmark_smt_fill             runs a benchmark on filling the SMT with different amounts of values
+benchmark_smt_ops              runs the benchmarks testing different operations on the SMT against different sized tries
+benchmark_smst                 runs all benchmarks for the SMST
+benchmark_smst_fill            runs a benchmark on filling the SMST with different amounts of values
+benchmark_smst_ops             runs the benchmarks test different operations on the SMST against different sized tries
+benchmark_proof_sizes          runs the benchmarks test the proof sizes for different sized tries
+```

docs/faq.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+# FAQ <!-- omit in toc -->
+
+- [History](#history)
+  - [Fork](#fork)
+- [Implementation](#implementation)
+  - [What's the story behind Extension Node Implementation?](#whats-the-story-behind-extension-node-implementation)
+
+This documentation is meant to capture common questions that come up and act
+as a supplement or secondary reference to the primary documentation.
+
+## History
+
+### Fork
+
+This library was originally forked off of [celestiaorg/smt](https://github.com/celestiaorg/smt)
+which was archived on Feb 27th, 2023.
+
+## Implementation
+
+### What's the story behind Extension Node Implementation?
+
+The [SMT extension node](./smt.md#extension-nodes) is very similar to that of
+Ethereum's [Modified Merkle Patricia Trie](https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/data-structures-and-encoding/patricia-merkle-trie).
+
+A quick primer on it can be found in this [5P;1R post](https://olshansky.substack.com/p/5p1r-ethereums-modified-merkle-patricia).
+
+WIP

docs/mapstore.md

@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
-# MapStore
-
-<!-- toc -->
+# MapStore <!-- omit in toc -->
 
+- [Introduction](#introduction)
 - [Implementations](#implementations)
-  * [SimpleMap](#simplemap)
-  * [BadgerV4](#badgerv4)
+  - [SimpleMap](#simplemap)
+  - [BadgerV4](#badgerv4)
+- [Note On External Writability](#note-on-external-writability)
 
-<!-- tocstop -->
+## Introduction
 
 The `MapStore` is a simple interface used by the SM(S)T to store, delete and
 retrieve key-value pairs. It is intentionally simple and minimalistic so as to
@@ -31,11 +31,15 @@ See [simplemap.go](../kvstore/simplemap/simplemap.go) for more details.
 
 ### BadgerV4
 
-This library provides a wrapper around [dgraph-io/badger][badgerv4] to adhere
-to the `MapStore` interface. See the [full documentation](./badger-store.md)
-for additional functionality and implementation details.
+This library provides a wrapper around [dgraph-io/badger][https://github.com/dgraph-io/badger] to adhere to
+the `MapStore` interface. See the [full documentation](./badger-store.md) for
+additional functionality and implementation details.
+
+See: [badger](../kvstore/badger/) for more details on the implementation of this
+submodule.
 
-See: [badger](../kvstore/badger/) for more details on the implementation of
-this submodule.
+## Note On External Writability
 
-[badgerv4]: https://github.com/dgraph-io/badger
+Any key-value store used by the tries should **not** be able to be externally
+writeable in production. This opens the possibility to attacks where the writer
+can modify the trie database and prove values that were not inserted.