Decoupling Smart Contract Execution from Blockchain Nodes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional blockchain systems face performance and efficiency issues due to the tight coupling of smart contracts with node devices, which require significant computing capabilities and limited storage, leading to low consensus efficiency and restricted complexity and load handling.
Innovation Solution
Decoupling smart contracts from node devices by deploying a contract engine in a trusted third party, allowing node devices to invoke the contract engine for execution and enabling consensus through result set comparison with a world state, thereby reducing performance demands on node devices and enhancing consensus efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If smart contracts are tightly coupled with node devices, then smart contract execution can be performed locally, but node devices require significant computing capabilities and storage, increasing device complexity and performance demands
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the smart contract execution function from node devices and places it in a dedicated smart contract storage area. Node devices no longer need to store or execute smart contracts locally; instead, they send execution requests to the storage area which contains the contract code. This extraction reduces the computing and storage requirements of node devices while maintaining the ability to execute smart contracts within the blockchain system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a smart contract storage area as an intermediary component between node devices and smart contract execution. This storage area acts as a mediator that receives execution requests from nodes, retrieves the appropriate smart contract code, and performs the execution. This intermediary approach allows nodes to offload the burden of storing and managing smart contracts while still participating in the execution process.
2Reliability
If all node devices execute smart contracts locally, then each node can independently verify contracts, but consensus efficiency decreases as every device must participate in execution
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the smart contract execution process into separate components: node devices handle transaction validation and consensus voting, while a dedicated smart contract storage area handles contract code storage and execution. This segmentation allows nodes to focus on consensus verification without the overhead of executing complex smart contracts, thereby improving overall consensus efficiency while maintaining verification reliability.
3Adaptability or versatility
If smart contracts are stored and executed on node devices, then contracts can be executed, but the complexity and computational load of smart contracts restricts what can be deployed
Solution Approach 1:
By extracting smart contract storage and execution from node devices to a dedicated smart contract storage area, the patent enables the deployment of more complex and computationally intensive smart contracts. Nodes are no longer constrained by their local computational resources, as the heavy lifting is performed in the specialized storage area designed to handle complex contract logic.
Data Source
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AI summary
Embodiments of the present specification provide methods and apparatuses for executing a smart contract of a blockchain, and electronic devices. The blockchain is interconnected to a trusted third party, a contract engine for executing a smart contract is deployed in the trusted third party, and the method includes the following: a node device in the blockchain receives a target transaction initiated by a client device to invoke a target smart contract; obtains contract source code of the target smart contract from a distributed database of the blockchain in response to the target transaction; and sends the contract source code to the trusted third party so that the contract engine of the trusted third party executes the contract source code and returns an execution result to the node device.