- Looking at the OOS `StateProofVerifier` and `MerklePatriciaProofVerifier` contract that extracts the slot, the `exists` flag will be flagged as true as long as a non-zero length value is returned as seen [here](https://github.com/curvefi/curve-xdao/blob/3ff77bd2ccc9c88d50ee42d2a746fc7648c7ff2c/contracts/libs/StateProofVerifier.sol#L133C13-L136). From the `MerklePatriciaProofVerifier.extractProofValue`, the minimum length returned will be 1 as represenetd by `bytes(0)`. So this seems to be purely a sanity check that might not even be required. - A slot with zero values is only allowed when the proof provided by the prover correctly proofs that such values are included within the Merkle-Patricia-Tree. The values fetched from mainnet from the V3Vault stored in the merkle trie is likely checked before hand and aggregated into the MerkleTree.