Performance Overhead of Atomic Crosschain Transactions

Abstract: Atomic Crosschain Transaction technology allows composable programming across permissioned Ethereum blockchains. It allows for inter-contract and inter-blockchain function calls that are both synchronous and atomic: if one part fails, the whole call graph of function calls is rolled back. This paper analyses the processing overhead of using this technique compared to using multiple standard non-atomic single blockchain transactions. The additional processing is analysed for three scenarios involving multiple blockchains: the Hotel - Train problem, Supply Chain with Provenance, and an Oracle. The technology is shown to reduce the performance of Hyperledger Besu from 375 tps to 39.5 tps if all transactions are instigated on one node, or approaching 65.2 tps if the transactions are instigated on a variety of nodes, for the Hotel-Train scenario.