[matrixarkai]

What changed

• Send fresh whole-page star payloads to a rotating write quorum first.
• Use remaining eligible members only when the first wave cannot acknowledge the quorum.
• Retry unanswered page-head members before reporting sparse replica state as corrupt.

Measured effect

For a healthy three-member group with a two-member write quorum, two fresh batches send four payload frames instead of six. That removes 33.3% of foreground payload transfers and matching journal appends while rotating work across every member. Mutable and partial page writes retain their existing full eligible-member fencing.

Validation

• 726 library tests passed; 33 large or controlled measurements ignored.
• 17 state-transfer tests passed; 4 controlled measurements ignored.
• 21 object-writer connection tests passed.
• Multi-process metadata routing through a standalone star quorum passed.
• All targets and all features passed cargo check.