Rachel Bousfield, Offchain Labs’ tech lead, clarifies misconceptions surrounding the effectiveness of parallel EVMs.
Parallelizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) has garnered attention in the cryptocurrency space recently. This approach aims to boost transaction throughput and blockchain scalability by processing multiple transactions simultaneously, rather than sequentially. However, Rachel Bousfield, Offchain Labs’ tech lead, suggests that people often overstate the benefits of parallelism, as fee reductions attributed to it may stem from other factors. She explains that different blockchains have varying hardware requirements; while some enable parallelism, the associated node operation costs may rise significantly.
Bousfield highlights that parallelism can enhance efficiency when users engage in diverse crypto activities simultaneously. Yet, real-world blockchain demand often involves contention, where multiple users vie to perform similar actions simultaneously, driving up gas prices. Polygon Labs’ study indicates that parallelism applies to roughly 55% of transactions on its network. Bousfield cautions against viewing parallelism as a panacea, emphasizing that it has limitations.
To address transaction speed challenges and enhance throughput, Bousfield discusses Arbitrum Stylus. This approach simplifies data interpretation for hardware, facilitating quicker processing. Unlike traditional EVMs, Stylus communicates directly with the central processing unit (CPU), achieving significant speed improvements. Bousfield suggests that strategies like Stylus hold promise for optimizing blockchain performance.
