Parallel Execution of Solidity Smart Contract using Append-only Shared Log

Abstract

Ethereum is one of the most actively used blockchain platforms that supports various decentralized services such as DeFi, NFT, and the Metaverse. Such services are enabled by Solidity smart contracts. A block is mined by executing a batch of transactions and reaching an agreement among consensus nodes. However, since the execution model of Ethereum is Order-Execute, all transactions must be ordered first and executed sequentially, resulting in limited block feed to consensus phase. This may lead to underutilization of consensus capacity. In this paper, we propose a parallel execution model for Solidity smart contracts using append-only shared logs. The parallel execution model consists of the following components: (1) key-value state sharding, (2) Solidity simulation module for each shard, (3) append-only log shared among Solidity simulation module; Append-only log stores the read-write set of a transaction in each entry, (4) the block mining module that is responsible for creating a block based on the shared log information and initiating the block consensus phase.