Sequential execution is a bottleneck because a single CPU core processes transactions one-by-one. This architecture, inherited from the EVM, creates a hard physical limit on transactions per second (TPS).
solana-and-the-rise-of-high-performance-chains
Blog
Why Parallel Execution is Non-Negotiable for Certain Use Cases
Sequential processing is a fundamental bottleneck for applications with independent transactions. This analysis argues that parallel execution is not an optimization but a requirement for scaling high-frequency on-chain logic like airdrops, NFT mints, and perp DEXs.
introduction
THE SCALING IMPERATIVE
The Sequential Bottleneck is a Design Flaw
Sequential execution, a legacy of EVM design, fundamentally limits throughput for high-frequency applications.
Parallel execution is non-negotiable for DeFi and gaming. High-volume DEX arbitrage, NFT minting, and on-chain games like Parallel require simultaneous state updates that sequential chains cannot provide.
Solana and Sui prove the model. Solana's Sealevel runtime and Sui's object-centric model achieve orders-of-magnitude higher TPS by processing independent transactions concurrently. Their existence validates the market demand.
Evidence: Aptos' Block-STM parallel executor benchmarks show a 16x throughput increase over sequential processing under optimal workloads. This quantifies the performance penalty of the old paradigm.
key-trends
WHY SERIAL EXECUTION BREAKS
The High-Frequency On-Chain Frontier
Serial blockchains create artificial congestion, making entire categories of high-performance applications impossible.
01
The Problem: The DEX Liquidity Death Spiral
On serial chains like Ethereum L1, arbitrage and liquidations are winner-take-all races. This creates a toxic environment where ~90% of gas is spent on failed transactions from competing bots, driving up costs for all users and fragmenting liquidity across inefficient venues.
- MEV extraction becomes the primary economic activity.
- Liquidity providers face toxic flow, reducing capital efficiency.
- Retail users pay for bot wars through slippage and fees.
~90%
Wasted Gas
$1B+
Annual MEV
02
The Solution: Parallel EVM (Aptos, Sui, Monad)
These chains execute non-conflicting transactions simultaneously. A liquidation, a swap, and an NFT mint can all process in the same block if they touch different accounts. This eliminates zero-sum races for the same state.
- Throughput scales with hardware, not consensus.
- Predictable execution enables complex, stateful DeFi primitives.
- Sub-second finality becomes viable, enabling CEX-like UX.
10k+
TPS Potential
<1s
Finality
03
The Killer App: On-Chain Order Books (dYdX, Aevo)
Central limit order books require sub-millisecond updates and concurrent reads/writes to the same price tick. Serial execution makes this impossibly slow and expensive. Parallel execution is the only viable path for a fully on-chain, non-custodial CLOB.
- Enables high-frequency trading (HFT) strategies on-chain.
- Eliminates reliance on centralized sequencers for matching.
- Unlocks composability with the rest of DeFi.
~500ms
Latency Target
100x
More Orders
04
The Bottleneck: State Access & Contention
Naive parallelism fails with high contention (e.g., everyone trading the same memecoin). Solutions like Aptos' Block-STM (software transactional memory) and Monad's asynchronous execution optimize for the common case while gracefully handling hotspots.
- Dynamic scheduling re-orders transactions to maximize parallelizability.
- Speculative execution assumes no conflict, rolling back only if needed.
- EVM compatibility is maintained, allowing for ecosystem migration.
30-100x
Speedup vs Serial
>95%
Parallelizable Tx
05
The Trade-Off: Synchronous Composability Loss
Parallel execution sacrifices the guarantee that transaction B sees the result of transaction A in the same block if they are independent. This breaks certain atomic DeFi "money legos" patterns, requiring protocols like Flashbots' SUAVE or intent-based architectures (UniswapX, CowSwap) for complex cross-domain settlements.
- Forces cleaner, modular protocol design.
- Shifts complexity to the protocol layer, not the user.
- Accelerates the intent-centric future.
New
Design Paradigm
Intents
Required
06
The Verdict: A Vertical Scaling Mandate
For perps DEXs, on-chain games, and social apps, parallel execution isn't an optimization—it's a prerequisite. The market will bifurcate: serial chains for high-value, asynchronous settlement (e.g., Ethereum L1) and parallel chains for high-frequency, synchronous state machines.
- Defines the next wave of user-facing dApps.
- Makes gas irrelevant for 99% of user actions.
- Creates a moat for first-mover L1s like Solana who pioneered this path.
Non-Negotiable
For Use Case
$10B+
Vertical TVL
deep-dive
THE THROUGHPUT IMPERATIVE
The Physics of Parallel vs. Sequential
Sequential execution is a physical bottleneck that caps blockchain throughput, making parallel processing a non-negotiable requirement for mass adoption.
Sequential execution is a physical bottleneck. A single-threaded runtime, like Ethereum's EVM, processes transactions one at a time. This creates a hard ceiling on transactions per second (TPS) regardless of hardware, as each operation must wait for the previous one to finalize state changes.
Parallel execution unlocks hardware-level scaling. Architectures like Sui's Move and Aptos' Block-STM execute independent transactions simultaneously. This maps computational work to multiple CPU cores, allowing TPS to scale with available hardware, not consensus speed.
The constraint defines viable applications. High-frequency DeFi, on-chain gaming, and social graphs require thousands of interdependent state updates per second. Sequential chains like Ethereum L1 cannot host these; they must migrate to parallelized L2s like Arbitrum Nitro or dedicated appchains.
Evidence: Solana's validator specs. Solana validators require 12-16 core CPUs and 256GB of RAM to achieve 50k+ TPS, proving that parallelism consumes hardware, not block space. This is the fundamental trade-off: decentralization of nodes versus raw computational throughput.
PERFORMANCE BOTTLENECK ANALYSIS
Use Case Impact: Sequential vs. Parallel
Quantifies the transaction throughput and latency constraints of sequential execution for high-frequency, interdependent on-chain applications.
| Performance Metric / Capability | Sequential (e.g., Ethereum L1, Arbitrum) | Parallel (e.g., Sui, Aptos, Solana) | Hybrid/Async (e.g., Fuel, Monad) |
|---|---|---|---|
Theoretical Max TPS (Simple Payments) | ~15-30 | 100,000+ | 10,000+ |
Atomic Composability for DEX Aggregation | |||
Latency for 10 Dependent Swap Trades |
| < 1 second | ~2-5 seconds |
MEV Extraction Surface for Liquidations | High (queue-based) | Low (concurrent) | Medium (optimistic) |
State Contention in NFT Mint / Gaming | Severe (gas wars) | Minimal (partitioned) | Managed (UTXO model) |
Required Developer Paradigm Shift | None (familiar) | High (move/ownership) | Medium (state access) |
Gas Cost for Parallelizable Batch | Linear Sum (N * cost) | Sub-linear Sum (< N * cost) | Variable (depends on path) |
case-study
THE PERFORMANCE IMPERATIVE
When Parallel Execution is Non-Negotiable
Serial execution is a bottleneck for applications requiring real-time, high-throughput state updates. These are the domains where parallel processing is a core requirement, not an optimization.
01
High-Frequency On-Chain Trading
Serial blockchains like Ethereum are unusable for DEX arbitrage or liquidations, where latency is profit. Parallel execution enables sub-second trade finality and atomic multi-hop arbitrage across pools.
- Key Benefit: Captures millisecond MEV opportunities before serial chains.
- Key Benefit: Enables composable limit orders and TWAP execution without front-running.
~500ms
Finality
1000+ TPS
Per Shard
02
Massively Multiplayer On-Chain Games
Games with thousands of concurrent players require simultaneous state updates for assets, positions, and logic. Serial processing creates unplayable lag and state contention.
- Key Benefit: Real-time interaction between players and game objects.
- Key Benefit: Scalable in-game economies with non-conflicting transactions.
10k+
Concurrent Users
0 Latency
Perception
03
Institutional DeFi & Cross-Margin
Portfolio managers need to execute multi-asset rebalances and cross-margin positions atomically. Serial execution forces risky sequential settlement and position fragmentation.
- Key Benefit: Atomic portfolio rebalancing across Aave, Compound, Uniswap in one block.
- Key Benefit: Holistic risk management with synchronized liquidation checks.
$10B+
TVL Protected
1 Tx
Multi-Protocol
04
The Solana & Aptos Mandate
These L1s are architected from first principles for parallel execution (Sealevel, Block-STM). Their entire ecosystem value proposition collapses without it, forcing the issue for developers.
- Key Benefit: Native support for non-overlapping transactions.
- Key Benefit: Predictable performance under load, unlike congested serial chains.
50k+
Max TPS
$0.001
Avg. Cost
05
Decentralized Social & Content Platforms
Platforms like Farcaster or Lens require parallel posting, liking, and tipping. Serial execution turns a social feed into a transaction queue, destroying user experience.
- Key Benefit: Real-time social interactions with instant state propagation.
- Key Benefit: Monetization streams (microtips, subscriptions) that don't congest the network.
1M+
Daily Actions
<1s
Post Latency
06
The L2 Scaling Bottleneck
Even optimistic and ZK rollups hit a sequencer bottleneck if their execution layer is serial. Parallel execution is the next mandatory leap for Arbitrum Stylus, zkSync, and Starknet to reach web-scale throughput.
- Key Benefit: Unlocks the full data bandwidth of DA layers like EigenDA or Celestia.
- Key Benefit: Makes mass adoption economics viable by maximizing hardware utilization.
100x
Throughput Gain
-90%
Cost per Tx
counter-argument
THE SCALING IMPERATIVE
The Ethereum Maximalist Retort (And Why It's Wrong)
Ethereum's sequential execution is a bottleneck that cannot be solved by L2s alone for high-throughput applications.
Sequential execution is a bottleneck. Ethereum's single-threaded EVM serializes all transactions, creating a deterministic but slow state machine. This is the root cause of gas wars and high fees during congestion, not just block space.
L2s inherit the bottleneck. Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism batch transactions but ultimately post compressed data to Ethereum's sequential base layer. Their throughput is capped by the L1's data availability and finality speed.
High-frequency DeFi demands parallelism. Applications like on-chain order books (e.g., dYdX v4) or hyper-liquid DEXs require simultaneous processing of thousands of orders. Sequential chains cannot provide the required sub-second finality and low latency.
Parallel execution enables new primitives. It allows for atomic composability across shards or execution threads, something fragmented L2 rollups cannot achieve natively. This is essential for complex cross-margin systems and intent-based architectures like UniswapX.
Evidence: Solana's parallel executor, Sealevel, processes tens of thousands of non-conflicting transactions simultaneously. This architecture supports applications like the margin protocol Marginfi and the DEX Jupiter at a scale L1 Ethereum cannot.
takeaways
WHY SERIAL EXECUTION IS A DEAD END
TL;DR for Builders and Investors
Forget about 'nice-to-have' scaling. For entire categories of applications, parallel execution is a fundamental requirement for viability.
01
The Problem: The DeFi Bottleneck
Serial execution turns high-frequency DEX arbitrage and liquidations into a lottery, creating extractable value and systemic risk.\n- Key Benefit: Parallel execution enables sub-second liquidation and atomic arbitrage across pools.\n- Key Benefit: Eliminates >90% of MEV from simple front-running by processing independent orders simultaneously.
>90%
MEV Reduced
<1s
Liquidation Time
02
The Solution: State Access Patterns (Aptos/Sui Model)
Runtime tracks read/write sets per transaction, executing non-conflicting ones in parallel. This is the dominant architectural shift.\n- Key Benefit: Delivers 10,000-160,000 TPS for real-world, complex workloads, not just simple payments.\n- Key Benefit: Enables massively multiplayer on-chain games and social apps where user actions are independent.
10k+
Real TPS
0
Contention
03
The Investor Lens: Market Cap vs. Throughput Ceiling
A chain's Total Addressable Market (TAM) is capped by its execution model. Serial chains like Ethereum L1 are structurally limited to high-value, low-frequency settlements.\n- Key Benefit: Parallel chains (e.g., Solana, Aptos, Sui, Monad) target the $10T+ market of daily micro-transactions (gaming, social, IoT).\n- Key Benefit: Valuation is driven by throughput monetization, not just store-of-value. Parallel execution is the only path to sustainable, usage-based revenue at scale.
$10T+
New TAM
100x
Fee Potential
04
The Builder Reality: User Experience or Bust
Web2 users expect instant, reliable interactions. Serial blockchains with variable latency and frequent failed transactions cannot support mainstream products.\n- Key Benefit: Parallel execution provides predictable sub-second finality, a prerequisite for any consumer-facing app.\n- Key Benefit: Enables composable, complex transactions (e.g., multi-step game move + NFT mint + token swap) as a single, fast user action.
<1s
Finality
0%
TX Failures
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