Crystality: A Programming Model for Smart Contracts on Parallel EVMs

Abstract

Scaling blockchain performance through parallel smart contract execution has gained significant attention, as traditional methods remain constrained by the performance of a single virtual machine (VM), even in multi-chain or Layer-2 systems. Parallel VMs offer a compelling solution by enabling concurrent transaction execution within a single smart contract, using multiple CPU cores. However, Ethereum's sequential, shared-everything model limits the efficiency of existing parallel mechanisms, resulting in frequent rollbacks with optimistic methods and high overhead with pessimistic methods due to state dependency analysis and locking.