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arxiv: 2505.05358 · v3 · pith:JTKQNXRYnew · submitted 2025-05-08 · 💻 cs.DC · cs.ET

Blockchain Transaction Conflicts: A Historical Perspective

Parwat Singh Anjana , Srivatsan Ravi , Maurice Herlihy This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-22 15:55 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.DC cs.ET
keywords transaction conflictsblockchain parallelismethereumsolanasmart contractshistorical analysisindependent transactions
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The pith

Historical Ethereum blocks often contain over 50% independent transactions while Solana blocks show longer average conflict chains of 58%.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper measures transaction conflicts and independence in past blocks from Ethereum and Solana to determine how much parallelism is theoretically possible within each block. It reports that more than half of Ethereum blocks have over half their transactions independent of one another, whereas Solana blocks exhibit longer chains of dependent transactions on average. This empirical view of real workloads supplies a concrete basis for improving parallel smart-contract execution on both platforms.

Core claim

Analysis of historical transaction logs shows Ethereum blocks frequently achieve high independence, with over 50% independent transactions in more than 50% of blocks, while Solana blocks contain longer conflict chains averaging around 58% compared to 18% in Ethereum.

What carries the argument

Block-level measurement of transaction independence and conflict-chain length extracted directly from historical blockchain execution traces.

If this is right

  • Parallel schedulers for Ethereum can safely execute large fractions of transactions concurrently within a block.
  • Solana execution engines must handle longer dependency chains that limit the exploitable parallelism.
  • Contract designers can target reduced conflict patterns to increase the share of independent transactions.
  • Platform upgrades could incorporate historical conflict statistics to set dynamic parallelism targets.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Extending the same log-based measurement to other chains could identify which design choices most reduce conflicts.
  • If conflict detection is made more precise, the reported independence gaps between Ethereum and Solana might narrow or widen.
  • These statistics could inform hybrid execution models that combine optimistic and pessimistic scheduling.

Load-bearing premise

The method for detecting conflicts and independence from historical logs captures all real dependencies without systematic overcounting or undercounting.

What would settle it

Re-running the same historical traces with an alternative dependency-detection algorithm that produces independence rates below 40% for Ethereum or conflict-chain lengths below 40% for Solana.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2505.05358 by Maurice Herlihy, Parwat Singh Anjana, Srivatsan Ravi.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Execution in Ethereum (read-write oblivious) versus Solana (read-write aware). [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Ethereum Historical Periods: analysis based on exclusive access to accounts [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p012_2.png] view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Ethereum: the number of blocks where the percentage of independent transactions [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_3.png] view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Historical Blocks from Solana’s mainnet: 1000 blocks from each historical period [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_4.png] view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Ethereum versus Solana in recent historical period. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p020_5.png] view at source ↗
read the original abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of historical data across two popular blockchain networks: Ethereum and Solana. Our study focuses on two key aspects: transaction conflicts and the maximum theoretical parallelism within historical blocks. We aim to quantify the degree of transaction parallelism and assess how effectively it can be exploited by systematically examining block-level characteristics, both within individual blocks and across different historical periods. In particular, this study is the first of its kind to leverage historical transactional workloads to evaluate conflict patterns. By offering a structured approach to analyzing these conflicts, our research provides valuable insights and an empirical basis for developing more efficient parallel execution techniques for smart contracts in the Ethereum and Solana. Our empirical analysis reveals that historical Ethereum blocks frequently achieve high independence, with over 50\% independent transactions in more than 50\% of blocks, while, on average, Solana blocks contain longer conflict chains $\sim$58\%, compared to $\sim$18\% in Ethereum, reflecting fundamentally different parallel execution dynamics.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

1 major / 1 minor

Summary. The paper presents a comprehensive empirical analysis of historical transaction data from Ethereum and Solana blockchains, focusing on transaction conflicts, independence, and maximum theoretical parallelism within blocks. It claims that Ethereum blocks frequently achieve high independence (over 50% independent transactions in more than 50% of blocks) while Solana blocks exhibit longer conflict chains on average (~58% vs. ~18% in Ethereum), providing an empirical basis for improving parallel smart contract execution techniques.

Significance. If the reported statistics are supported by a validated and reproducible conflict detection procedure, the work would supply a useful historical benchmark for conflict patterns across two major blockchains with different execution models. This could directly inform the design of parallel execution engines by quantifying real-world independence and chain-length distributions. The study is the first to leverage historical workloads for this purpose, but its current evidential basis is limited by missing methodological details.

major comments (1)
  1. [Abstract / Empirical Analysis section] Abstract and the description of the empirical method: the central claims (Ethereum >50% independent txns in >50% of blocks; Solana conflict chains ~58% vs Ethereum ~18%) rest on an automated conflict-detection procedure applied to historical logs, yet the manuscript supplies no details on the algorithm, state-access tracing rules, handling of delegate calls or cross-program invocations, data selection criteria, time periods, or any ground-truth validation/sensitivity analysis. Without these, the quantitative comparison between Ethereum and Solana cannot be assessed for systematic over- or under-counting of dependencies.
minor comments (1)
  1. [Abstract] The abstract uses approximate symbols (~58%, ~18%) without stating whether these are means, medians, or other aggregates; clarify the exact statistic and report confidence intervals or standard deviations if available.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

1 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the constructive and detailed feedback. The primary issue identified concerns the lack of explicit methodological details supporting the empirical claims on transaction independence and conflict chains. We agree this information is essential for reproducibility and assessment of the results, and we will expand the manuscript accordingly in the revised version.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Abstract / Empirical Analysis section] Abstract and the description of the empirical method: the central claims (Ethereum >50% independent txns in >50% of blocks; Solana conflict chains ~58% vs Ethereum ~18%) rest on an automated conflict-detection procedure applied to historical logs, yet the manuscript supplies no details on the algorithm, state-access tracing rules, handling of delegate calls or cross-program invocations, data selection criteria, time periods, or any ground-truth validation/sensitivity analysis. Without these, the quantitative comparison between Ethereum and Solana cannot be assessed for systematic over- or under-counting of dependencies.

    Authors: We acknowledge that the current version of the manuscript omits a sufficiently detailed description of the conflict-detection procedure, which limits the ability to fully evaluate the reported statistics. The analysis relies on execution traces from archival nodes to extract read and write sets for each transaction. In the revised manuscript we will add a dedicated 'Conflict Detection Methodology' subsection that specifies: the algorithm used to identify conflicts via overlapping state accesses; state-access tracing rules for both EVM storage slots and Solana accounts; explicit handling of delegate calls (by following the actual storage modifications) and cross-program invocations (by traversing the call graph); data selection criteria including the precise block ranges and time periods sampled from Ethereum and Solana mainnets; and sensitivity analyses together with a limited manual validation on a sample of blocks to quantify potential over- or under-counting. These additions will make the quantitative comparison between the two chains fully assessable and reproducible while preserving the core empirical findings. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

Direct empirical counts from historical logs; no derivation reduces to inputs

full rationale

The paper reports measured statistics (Ethereum independence rates, Solana vs. Ethereum conflict-chain lengths) obtained by processing public on-chain transaction logs and traces. These quantities are tallied directly from the data; no equations, fitted parameters, or self-citations are invoked to generate the percentages. The central claims are therefore falsifiable observations rather than quantities that equal their own inputs by construction. The detection procedure itself is an external heuristic whose accuracy is an independent methodological question, not a circularity issue.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claims rest on the representativeness of the chosen historical datasets and the accuracy of the (unspecified) conflict detection procedure used to label transactions as independent or chained.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Historical blockchain transaction logs contain sufficient information to correctly identify all conflicts and independence relations.
    The percentages are computed directly from these logs; any systematic logging or detection error would invalidate the reported independence and chain-length figures.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5697 in / 1080 out tokens · 39485 ms · 2026-05-22T15:55:30.900439+00:00 · methodology

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Reference graph

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