why do I see mostly-repeated data in vstorage? e.g. published.agoricNames.instance

[dckc]

A colleague asked...

Why is it that when I look at the data under published.agoricNames.instance there are multiple lists mostly the same values?

curl https://emerynet.api.agoric.net/agoric/vstorage/data/published.agoricNames.instance | jq .value -r | jq '.values[]' -r | jq .body -r seem to give back the same list duplicated 3 times, while on my local chain it gave back 2 lists largely the same with one element being different.

[dckc]

If the vstorage entry is updated multiple times in a single block, there will be multiple values in the array known as "cells".

vstorage includes the history of values across blocks as well.

@agoric/rpc just polls the latest value periodically and takes the last/most recent value of the array.

@agoric/casting iterates and yields each individual value so followers can make sure they see every single update, even within the same block. This is useful for example when watching offer status updates, because each new offer shares/overwrites a single vstorage entry in the user's wallet.

ack: @samsiegart