Intermittent missing 'to' field in eth_getTransactionByHash response for contract creation transactions on Optimism Mainnet

[cshintov]

System information

  geth: us-docker.pkg.dev/oplabs-tools-artifacts/images/op-geth:v1.101408.0
  node: us-docker.pkg.dev/oplabs-tools-artifacts/images/op-node:v1.9.1
  l2geth: ethereumoptimism/l2geth:0.5.31

Expected behaviour

The to field should always be present in the RPC response for eth_getTransactionByHash, with a null value for contract creation transactions.

Actual behaviour

The to field is sometimes missing in RPC responses for contract creation transactions when querying via eth_getTransactionByHash shortly after the transaction is processed. The field appears correctly (as null) when querying again after a few minutes.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

1. Submit a contract creation transaction on Optimism Mainnet.
2. Immediately after the transaction is processed, query it using eth_getTransactionByHash.
3. Observe that the to field is missing from the response.
4. Wait for a few minutes and query the same transaction again.
5. Observe that the to field is now present and correctly set to null.

Example transaction: 0x43c713b640309fd7c28c61f5ad3f4e0c34404519b5171670e646b7a5c22b620a

Additional context

• This issue was observed on Optimism Mainnet.
• It affects blocks in the range 126647700 to 126647748.

Questions

1. Is this a known issue or intended behavior?
2. Could this be related to indexing delays, state trie updates, or caching mechanisms?
3. Are there any Optimism-specific optimizations that might cause this?