MultiCall: A Transaction-batching Interpreter for Ethereum

Abstract

Smart contracts are self-executing programs running in the blockchain allowing for decentralised storage and execution without a middleman. On-chain execution is expensive, with miners charging fees for distributed execution according to a cost model defined in the protocol. In particular, transactions have a high fixed cost. In this paper we present MultiCall, an interpreter that reduces the cost of smart contract execution by emulating sequences of transactions from multiple users in one transaction. We have implemented and integrated MultiCall into Ethereum. Our evaluation shows that using MultiCall provides a saving between 56.8% and 98.9% of the fixed per-transaction cost compared to the standard approach of sending transactions individually. CCS CONCEPTS• Applied computing → Digital cash; • Computer systems organization → Peer-to-peer architectures; • Security and privacy → Public key encryption; • Software and its engineering → Interpreters.

Saving gas with a packaging framework for Ethereum transactions

“…For instance, Layer-2 protocols pro- vide a mechanism to execute batches of transactions but they are not concerned with methodologies on how to create these batches in an optimal way, i.e., by analysing conflicts between transactions. Users can submit multiple transactions at once by either using a smart contract that executes them together [Multisend 2023] or a tool/service that broadcasts them as a single transaction [Wang et al 2021] [Hughes et al 2021].…”