getTransaction reports initialRotations as numOfInitialValidators on Bradbury (0 instead of 5) #231

On Bradbury, getTransaction() reports the leader-rotation limit as the initial validator count. A transaction actually created with five validators and zero rotations is reported as having zero initial validators.

Environment / observed result

CLI 0.39.1, bundled genlayer-js 1.1.8, Bradbury RPC https://rpc-bradbury.genlayer.com, chain ID 4221.

Transaction:
0xbfbeb7d712d834a94b8f00ccba3ae98f06466db39dee7ad9fcd3f8902e45b8c0.

At block 23734515 on 7 October 2026:

The two parameters describe different things. Initial validators remain five while the appeal committee expands.

Reproduction

Use genlayer-js@1.1.8 and viem in a Node project; save this as repro.mjs and run node repro.mjs. It only reads an existing public transaction; no signing key is needed.

import { createClient } from "genlayer-js";
import { testnetBradbury } from "genlayer-js/chains";
import { createPublicClient, http } from "viem";

const rpc = "https://rpc-bradbury.genlayer.com";
const hash = "0xbfbeb7d712d834a94b8f00ccba3ae98f06466db39dee7ad9fcd3f8902e45b8c0";
const sdk = createClient({ chain: testnetBradbury, endpoint: rpc });
const evm = createPublicClient({
  chain: testnetBradbury, transport: http(rpc),
});
const block = await evm.getBlock();
const spec = testnetBradbury.consensusDataContract;
const [stored, rounds] = await evm.readContract({
  address: spec.address, abi: spec.abi,
  functionName: "getTransactionAllData",
  args: [hash], blockNumber: block.number,
});
const projected = await sdk.getTransaction({ hash });
console.log(JSON.stringify({
  block: block.number, timestamp: block.timestamp,
  storedStatus: stored.status,
  validUntil: stored.validUntil,
  initialRotations: stored.initialRotations,
  storedInitialValidators: stored.numOfInitialValidators,
  sdkInitialValidators: projected.numOfInitialValidators,
  lastRound: rounds.at(-1),
}, (_, value) => typeof value === "bigint" ? value.toString() : value, 2));

Expected: sdkInitialValidators equals storedInitialValidators, here "5".
Observed: SDK "0", stored "5", rotations "0".

Source of the mismatch

The same fallback is present in current main at commit
1b7f50a3a3f2963ea857941b0fb386081dd5c326.

src/transactions/decoders.ts:79–81:

const numOfInitialValidators =
  tx.numOfInitialValidators ?? (tx as any).initialRotations;

getTransaction
already fetches getTransactionAllData, but merges only txExecutionResult into the projected transaction before decoding it. The authoritative initial-validator field in the stored transaction is available in that existing response.

Suggested fix / regression checks

Normalize the actual initial-validator field from the stored transaction already fetched by getTransaction. Do not substitute initialRotations; for ABIs without the count, expose an explicit unknown/error consistent with the API's compatibility policy.

Regression fixtures should distinguish:

• stored initial count 5, projected count absent, rotations 0 → initial count 5;
• stored initial count 5, projected count absent, rotations 3 → initial count 5.

This affects committee-size diagnostics and monitoring. The separate stalled-appeal report does not establish that this decoder bug causes the chain to stall.

Related receipt compatibility work: #144, #148 and #220. I did not find a public issue describing this exact count/rotation substitution.