Lock poisoning causes cascading panics in ValidatorSetManager

[qj0r9j0vc2]

Problem

The ValidatorSetManager in crates/consensus/src/validator_set_manager.rs uses expect("lock poisoned") for all RwLock operations, which will cause cascading panics if any thread holding a lock panics.

Details

Multiple occurrences throughout the file:

*self.current_epoch.read().expect("lock poisoned")
let mut sets = self.sets.write().expect("lock poisoned")
let mut pending = self.pending_next_epoch.write().expect("lock poisoned")

Similar patterns exist in:

• crates/rpc/src/middleware.rs (rate limiter locks)
• crates/consensus/src/validator_set_manager.rs (InMemoryValidatorSetStorage)

Impact

• If any consensus thread panics while holding a lock, all subsequent validator set operations will panic
• Node becomes unrecoverable without restart
• No graceful degradation or error logging