Wasm binary size budget + link-time optimization audit

[truthixify]

Labels: Stellar Wave, stellar, perf, audit, drips, help-wanted
Tier: M (2–4 days)
Type: perf / audit

Context

Soroban enforces hard upload size limits on contract Wasm. As Wraith's Stellar contracts grow (especially wraith-names at ~363 LOC and growing), we're approaching the limits without knowing it. There's also a real fee implication: smaller Wasm is cheaper to deploy and re-deploy.

Today nobody is watching binary size. We need a budget + monitoring + an initial optimization pass.

Scope

1. Measure current Wasm size for each Stellar contract (debug, release, release+optimized via stellar contract optimize). Capture numbers in contracts/stellar/SIZE.md.
2. Set a budget per contract — propose 20% headroom under Soroban's current upload limit at the time of writing.
3. Optimization audit — identify what's contributing to size:
   • Are we shipping panic messages? Replace with panic_with_error! + minimal error codes.
   • Are we using String::from where &str would do? (Stack vs. heap matters for Wasm size.)
   • Are dependencies pulling in extra features? Audit [features] in each Cargo.toml.
   • LTO config — verify lto = "fat" and codegen-units = 1 in release profile.
   • Strip symbols (strip = "symbols").
4. Apply the safe optimizations. Measure the win.
5. CI gate — add a job that fails if any contract's optimized Wasm exceeds its budget.

Acceptance criteria

• SIZE.md with current + budget numbers.
• Optimizations applied; size reductions measured.
• CI size-budget job in place.
• Documented "what to do if you exceed budget" recipe.

Why this matters

Hitting the Wasm upload limit mid-feature-development means an emergency refactor or a hard postponement. Catching this trend now is much cheaper than catching it later.

Resources

• Soroban Wasm limits: https://developers.stellar.org/docs/learn/encyclopedia/network-configuration/resource-and-fee-metering
• Rust binary size guide: https://github.com/johnthagen/min-sized-rust

[Lynndabel]

@Lynndabel has applied to work on this issue as part of the Stellar Wave Program's 5th wave.

Hello maintainer, I have reviewed the task description and will like tp work on this please. ETA: 6hours

ℹ️ Repo Maintainers: To accept this application, review their application or assign @Lynndabel to this issue.

[drips-wave]

Congratulations, @Lynndabel! 🎉 Your application was accepted by the repo's maintainers, and the issue is due on June 2, 2026.

🧑‍💻 @Lynndabel: Please resolve the issue such that the repo's maintainers have enough time to review your contribution before the due date. You'll earn Points for completing the issue on-time, which will make you eligible for a share of the Stellar Wave Program's reward pool.

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