The focus of this QA process for releasing v1 is to:

• test regressions with respect to our baseline, the v0.38 results (see #31),
• assess the performance of new features, including PBTS and storage optimizations,
• perform a stress test,
• optionally, test experimental features for bandwidth improvement.

The main goal of the QA process is to validate that there are no meaningful, substantial regression from the previous version. There is a regression if we see that there is a difference bigger than ~10% in the results.

Preliminary QA

### Tasks
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/903
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2058
- [ ] ~~stress test with high volumes of txs / big txs (aka "p2p storm")~~
- [ ] ~~update default parameters based on ^ (_plus other possible fixes tbd_) e.g. mempool parameters~~
- [x] Run preliminary test of PBTS branch on 200 nodes
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2323
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2460

Hypotheses to verify

• new key layout helps access time and compaction
• bandwidth optimizations reduced the amount of data sent/received
• with updated default parameters, CometBFT is resilient against high volumes of txs / big txs.

Questions

1. Do we want to make some bandwidth improvements non-experimental?

Improve end-to-end test framework

• e2e: test vote extension activation via InitChain and FinalizeBlock #2066
• e2e: Add load_max_txs option to manifest #2094
• fix(e2e): path to latency script files in DO #2148
• feat(e2e): Add new targets fast and clean to Makefile #2192
• feat(e2e): Log number of sent txs (success and failed) #2328

New metrics

• mempool: Add metric size of pool in bytes #1512
• feat(storage/metrics): Metrics to measure storage #1974

Final QA

Each task will update a section on the final QA report.

### Tasks
- [ ] ~~Capture metrics of v0.38 baseline (Optional, to do only if existing v0.38 metrics can't be reused)~~
- [ ] #2461
- [ ] #2513
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2656
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2657
- [ ] ~~Test storage on experiments longer than 90s~~
- [ ] https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/issues/2746
- [x] Improve QA instructions as the tests are run #2405