[duped]

If you use varints for pointers you can have the best of both worlds, and achieve even better compaction for the smallest objects.

[pshirshov]

Yep, can be done but they aren't free because of variable size. With constant pointers I can access const-sized elements directly, with varints I would have to do some rituals.

I have another binary encoding for different purposes (https://github.com/7mind/baboon) which relies on varints, in case of SICK I decided to go with pointers of constant size to save some pennies on access efficiency.