Parallel Execution of Blockchain Transactions with Sharding

Scalability is one of the main problems limiting blockchain applications. Most recent research on blockchain scalability has focused on improving the consensus layer, but the most advanced consensus protocols can only reach a few thousand transactions per second(tps), which is far below the capacity of typical distributed databases. With the use of blockchain sharding technology, the time overhead corresponding to the execution layer and the consensus layer in the blockchain is gradually reduced. Additionally, improving the efficiency of transaction execution could incentivize nodes to actively verify transactions and enhance blockchain security. In this paper, we propose a Sharding Based Parallel Execution of Block Transactions (SPEx-Tran) framework in blockchain, which transforms the sequential execution of intra-block transactions into parallel execution to improve the performance of blockchain. In addition, based on the characteristics of blockchain sharding transactions, we further propose a Blockchain Transaction Scheduling (BCTS) algorithm to improve the performance of blockchain by optimizing the parallel execution process of transactions. In the BCTS algorithm, the mechanism of local multi-processors sharing the Conflict Transactions cache Table (CTT) simplifies the verification process of conflicting transactions, thus improving the blockchain performance. Experimental results show that the throughput of blockchain using the SPExTran framework and BCTS algorithm is significantly higher than that of typical sharding technologies.