Port nonce-aware tx mempool (#971) to the soft-finality branch - #977

Node.js 20 is deprecated. The following actions target Node.js 20 but are being forced to run on Node.js 24: actions/checkout@v4, actions/setup-go@v5, golangci/golangci-lint-action@v8. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/