research-article

Block-STM: Scaling Blockchain Execution by Turning Ordering Curse to a Performance Blessing

Authors:

Rati Gelashvili,

Alexander Spiegelman,

George Danezis,

Runtian ZhouAuthors Info & Claims

PPoPP '23: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming

Pages 232 - 244

https://doi.org/10.1145/3572848.3577524

Published: 21 February 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Block-STM is a parallel execution engine for smart contracts, built around the principles of Software Transactional Memory. Transactions are grouped in blocks, and every execution of the block must yield the same deterministic outcome. Block-STM further enforces that the outcome is consistent with executing transactions according to a preset order, leveraging this order to dynamically detect dependencies and avoid conflicts during speculative transaction execution. At the core of Block-STM is a novel, low-overhead collaborative scheduler of execution and validation tasks.

Block-STM is implemented on the main branch of the Diem Blockchain code-base and runs in production at Aptos. Our evaluation demonstrates that Block-STM is adaptive to workloads with different conflict rates and utilizes the inherent parallelism therein. Block-STM achieves up to 110k tps in the Diem benchmarks and up to 170k tps in the Aptos Benchmarks, which is a 20x and 17x improvement over the sequential baseline with 32 threads, respectively. The throughput on a contended workload is up to 50k tps and 80k tps in Diem and Aptos benchmarks, respectively.

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Cited By

Miller dKorth HPalmieri RLee IChabbi MSteuwer M(2024)POSTER: OCToPus: Semantic-aware Concurrency Control for Blockchain TransactionsProceedings of the 29th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/3627535.3638494(463-465)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627535.3638494
Capocasale VPedone FPerboli G(2024)Parallel Transaction Execution in Blockchain and the Ambiguous State Representation Problem2024 19th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC)10.1109/EDCC61798.2024.00035(131-138)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDCC61798.2024.00035
Cheeseman LParkinson MClebsch SKogias MDrossopoulou SChisnall DWrigstad TLiétar P(2023)When Concurrency Matters: Behaviour-Oriented ConcurrencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228527:OOPSLA2(1531-1560)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
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Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Block-STM: Scaling Blockchain Execution by Turning Ordering Curse to a Performance Blessing
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Concurrent computing methodologies
    1. Concurrent algorithms
  2. Parallel computing methodologies
    1. Parallel algorithms
      1. Shared memory algorithms

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cover image ACM Conferences

PPoPP '23: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming

February 2023

480 pages

ISBN:9798400700156

DOI:10.1145/3572848

General Chair:
Maryam Mehri Dehnavi
University of Toronto
,
Program Chairs:
Milind Kulkarni
Purdue University
,
Sriram Krishnamoorthy
Google

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Published: 21 February 2023

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627535.3638494
Capocasale VPedone FPerboli G(2024)Parallel Transaction Execution in Blockchain and the Ambiguous State Representation Problem2024 19th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC)10.1109/EDCC61798.2024.00035(131-138)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDCC61798.2024.00035
Cheeseman LParkinson MClebsch SKogias MDrossopoulou SChisnall DWrigstad TLiétar P(2023)When Concurrency Matters: Behaviour-Oriented ConcurrencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228527:OOPSLA2(1531-1560)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622852
Pigaglio MKról MRiviére E(2023)Exploring Locality in Ethereum Transactions2023 5th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS)10.1109/BRAINS59668.2023.10317054(1-8)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2023
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Zarbafian PGramoli V(2023)Aion: Secure Transaction Ordering Using TEEsComputer Security – ESORICS 202310.1007/978-3-031-51482-1_17(332-350)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
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Stefo CXiang ZKokoris-Kogias L(2023)Executing and Proving Over Dirty LedgersFinancial Cryptography and Data Security10.1007/978-3-031-47754-6_1(3-20)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
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Heimbach LKniep QVonlanthen YWattenhofer R(2023)DeFi and NFTs Hinder Blockchain ScalabilityFinancial Cryptography and Data Security10.1007/978-3-031-47751-5_17(291-309)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
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Piduguralla MChakraborty SAnjana PPeri S(2023)DAG-Based Efficient Parallel Scheduler for Blockchains: Hyperledger Sawtooth as a Case StudyEuro-Par 2023: Parallel Processing10.1007/978-3-031-39698-4_13(184-198)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
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