SSZ-QL: A Guide to Querying Ethereum’s BeaconState Using Offsets, Proofs, and G-Indexes

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Learn how SSZ-QL lets Ethereum clients request tiny slices of BeaconState with Merkle proofs, using generalized indexes and SSZ analysis.
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Ethereum consensus clients today can’t efficiently serve small, verifiable pieces of BeaconState without shipping the entire ~271MB state or relying on ad-hoc debug endpoints. SSZ-QL, originally proposed by Etan Kissling and now prototyped by Jun and Fernando in Prysm, defines a standard query language for requesting arbitrary SSZ subtrees plus Merkle proofs, across both consensus and execution clients. The article walks through how generalized indexes and SSZ serialization shape the Merkle tree, how Prysm’s SSZ analyzer (analyzeType + PopulateVariableLengthInfo) computes offsets and chunk layouts, and how new Beacon API endpoints expose an initial SSZ-QL-powered /states/{state_id}/query and /blocks/{block_id}/query interface.