AVM status and limitations

Status, layer by layer

Layer	Status	Evidence
Whitepaper concepts	Proposed	A design document exists
Beta interpreter	Experimental	Source at a pinned revision with its own test annotations
Opcode set	Experimental	Generated from the pinned source. See opcodes
Universe indexer	Experimental	Six AVM RPCs, listed below
Universe integration	Experimental	Inscribe AVM Studio and the /avm/* API
Universe attestation	Readiness report	No conformance statement
Supported networks	Testnet4 only	From height 27000. No Signet. No mainnet writes

What must never be said

That the AVM is live on mainnet. That Universe supports AVM contracts on mainnet. That Testnet4 validation is production support. That a whitepaper concept is implemented. That an opcode marked tested upstream is production verified.

Indexer

RPCs, each prefixed blockchain.atomicals.avm.:

• capabilities
• status
• get_state
• get_state_history
• get_state_hash
• get_execution

The readiness report shows activation, the exact tip, schema 2, the attested native interpreter, the attested indexer revision, and a canary state hash.

An inherited guard in create_or_delete_atomical dropped every PROTOCOL (def) and CONTRACT (new) create, so no AVM protocol or contract was indexed. The fix admits both after activation. It is in review and not yet released.

Threat model for anyone considering it

Untrusted contract code. A contract script is attacker supplied. Re-enabled opcodes such as concatenation, multiplication, and shifts, combined with arbitrarily large numbers, make unbounded memory and time growth reachable unless the host bounds them.

Unbounded numbers. Arbitrary precision arithmetic means a small script can request very large allocations.

Unbounded state. State storage opcodes let a contract write data. Without a host-enforced limit, storage grows without bound.

Determinism. Every independent evaluator must reach the same result. Any dependence on host memory layout, iteration order, or locale breaks verification.

State substitution. A caller supplies state. Without a state hash bound to a revision, a dishonest caller can supply state that never resulted from honest execution.

Withdrawal correctness. Opcodes mark outputs for withdrawal. A host that applies those marks without independent validation is trusting the contract it just ran.

Resource controls a host would need

1. A hard limit on execution steps.
2. A hard limit on memory, including numeric magnitude.
3. A hard limit on state size per contract and per call.
4. A hard limit on the number of token table entries.
5. A wall clock timeout independent of the step limit.
6. Rejection rather than truncation when any limit is hit.
7. Deterministic behavior at every limit, so all evaluators agree on the failure.

What would have to exist before a network is supported

1. A pinned interpreter revision deployed on a named network.
2. Activation conditions, if any.
3. Deterministic conformance vectors executed against that exact revision in CI.
4. A published statement of what those vectors prove and what they do not.
5. A Universe service revision that exposes it, or an explicit statement that none does.
6. A resource limit policy, published.

Testnet4 has items 1, 2, and 5 and is still in validation. Mainnet has none in production. A network is supported only when all six exist.