From: thepipeline_xyz
Asynchronous execution, a core innovation introduced by Monad, leverages parallelism and pipelining to achieve high transaction throughput [00:00:08]. This combination of optimizations allows Monad to process 10,000 transactions per second at sub-cent gas fees [00:00:22].
Impact of Asynchronous Execution
The fundamental impact of asynchronous execution is the ability to have much larger block sizes [00:00:32]. This capability offers several benefits:
- Secure Development: App developers can write more secure code without concern for increasing gas costs for the end-user [00:00:38].
- Cost-Efficiency and Speed: It leads to much cheaper and faster transactions [00:00:46].
- Expanded Design Space: With expanded gas limits, new design spaces become available, enabling developers to use cutting-edge primitives like proof verification and signature aggregation [00:00:52].
Traditional Blockchain Execution Model
In a typical blockchain, when a user sends a transaction through an RPC server, it is sent to validators who maintain a mempool [00:01:15]. A leader validator selects transactions from this mempool, builds a block, and orders them [00:01:38].
A key characteristic of traditional blockchains is that the block time is shared between execution and consensus processes [00:01:52]. This means the time allocated for execution within a block is relatively small, often much smaller than the time spent on consensus due to the majority of time being consumed by network messages [00:02:30].
Role of Parallelism and Pipelining
Asynchronous execution fundamentally relies on parallelism [00:02:58]. In systems like Monad, parallelism is achieved through the use of multiple threads [00:03:06].
Instead of combining execution and consensus within a single block time on one thread, Monad “explodes” this process across multiple threads [00:03:13]:
- Separation of Concerns: In a multi-threaded setup, one thread can dedicate its entire block time to consensus for Block 0, while another thread, during the next block time, can perform the execution for that same Block 0 [00:03:32].
- Expanded Gas Budget: This separation allows the entire block time to be utilized for execution, no longer limiting it to a small segment [00:03:45]. This significantly expands the gas budget [00:04:19].
Key Concepts Illustrated
This model demonstrates several core concepts:
- Parallelism: Evident between the two threads operating concurrently [00:04:37].
- Pipelining: Achieved by sequencing the steps across threads. For instance, Block 0 undergoes consensus on one thread, and then its execution is performed on another thread in the subsequent block time, creating a pipeline [00:04:44].
- Asynchronous Execution: Defined by the separation of consensus on one thread and execution on another [00:05:08].
It is this synergistic combination of parallelism, pipelining, and asynchronous execution that enables Monad to be a highly performant system [00:05:29].