Question about extra field CriticalError in payloadStatus

[Alleysira]

Hi there,

I'm running a separate Pectra PoS testnet chain for API testing. During testing, I observed discrepancies in the JSON-RPC responses from execution clients—geth, besu, nethermind, reth and erigon.
Specifically, erigon returned additional CriticalError field in response of payloadStatus, which does not appear to be part of the current specification. Based on the test results, it seems that only Erigon returns this field.

For example, results from 5 EL clients after calling engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV3:

{"id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"payloadId": null, "payloadStatus": {"latestValidHash": null, "status": "SYNCING", "validationError": null}}, "server": "http://127.0.0.1:2119"} # geth
{"id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"payloadId": null, "payloadStatus": {"latestValidHash": null, "status": "SYNCING", "validationError": null}}, "server": "http://127.0.0.1:2135"} # besu
{"id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"payloadId": null, "payloadStatus": {"latestValidHash": null, "status": "SYNCING", "validationError": null}}, "server": "http://127.0.0.1:2202"} # nethermind
{"id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"payloadId": null, "payloadStatus": {"latestValidHash": null, "status": "SYNCING", "validationError": null}}, "server": "http://127.0.0.1:2245"} # reth
{"id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"payloadId": null, "payloadStatus": {"CriticalError": null, "latestValidHash": null, "status": "SYNCING", "validationError": null}}, "server": "http://127.0.0.1:2255"} # erigon

The related implementation in erigon:

erigon/turbo/engineapi/engine_types/jsonrpc.go

Lines 95 to 100 in 3e95cda

	type PayloadStatus struct {
	Status EngineStatus `json:"status" gencodec:"required"`
	ValidationError *StringifiedError `json:"validationError"`
	LatestValidHash *common.Hash `json:"latestValidHash"`
	CriticalError error
	}

The spec of the payloadStatus:

"schema": {
	"title": "Payload status object deprecating INVALID_BLOCK_HASH status",
	"type": "object",
	"required": [
		"status"
	],
	"properties": {
		"status": {
			"title": "Payload validation status",
			"type": "string",
			"enum": [
				"VALID",
				"INVALID",
				"SYNCING",
				"ACCEPTED"
			]
		},
		"latestValidHash": {
			"title": "The hash of the most recent valid block",
			"type": "string",
			"pattern": "^0x[0-9a-f]{64}$"
		},
		"validationError": {
			"title": "Validation error message",
			"type": "string"
		}
	}
}

I’m curious to know why Erigon includes the additional CriticalError field in the payloadStatus response, as this field is not part of the current specification. I’d also like to ask whether there are any plans to remove this field in future releases to ensure consistency across clients.

Thank you for your attention!

[yperbasis]

Good catch! Will be fixed by PR #15348.