Ethereum can speed up by running nearly 65% of its transactions in parallel, Sei says

A new study reveals that Ethereum can process more transactions and run faster by processing many of them at the same time.

A new study shows that almost 65% of Ethereum’s transactions could be processed simultaneously, potentially making the network much faster. In a blog post on Friday, analysts at layer 1 network Sei (SEI) revealed that many of Ethereum’s transactions are not interconnected and can run simultaneously, allowing the network to process more transactions and increase its speed.

Currently, Ethereum processes transactions one after another, also known as sequential processing. For example, if a person sends 1 (ETH) to another person and then that person sends 1 ETH to another person, these transactions must occur one after the other.

If they were processed simultaneously, the latter would be incorrect as your balance would not yet be updated. However, Sei’s study reveals that some processes do not influence each other.

As analysts at Sei explain, if Bob sends 1 ETH to Alice and someone else sends 1 ETH to you at the same time, they do not interfere with each other. These operations can occur in parallel, meaning they can be processed at the same time.

The study found that 64.85% of Ethereum transactions are this way, meaning they can be processed in parallel without waiting for others to finish. If this method is used, Ethereum can process much more transactions and become faster.

“Each block averages 60.77 dependent processes, indicating significant potential for parallel execution optimization.”

Sei

But there are still some challenges. Some transactions still need to be processed one after the other because they are interdependent; This is also called addiction. According to Sei’s calculations, approximately 35.15% of transactions on Ethereum are dependent on others.

There are different ways to increase the speed of Ethereum. One idea is called “optimistic concurrency control,” a method used by the Sei protocol that allows transactions to occur simultaneously, assuming they won’t cause problems.

After the operations are completed, the system checks whether there are any conflicts. If there is a problem, the system can redo these operations. This approach can help Ethereum process transactions faster while keeping things simple for developers. Sei admits that in the future, Ethereum may also use sharding, which splits the network into smaller pieces to help process transactions faster.