FicusDB: Scalable Multi-Versioned Authenticated Archival Storage

As consensus protocols scale, storage has become the dominant bottleneck in modern blockchains. Systems must maintain historical versions, generate integrity proofs, and sustain high throughput as state grows. Prior work often redesigns the authenticated data structure (ADS), but such changes sacrifice compatibility and require disruptive hard forks. We take the complementary approach: redesigning the storage layer while preserving the existing ADS interface.