Decoding gigagas The WordCreation Masters Paradigm Unveils a New Concept Will it Lead to Emerging Narratives

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
Questioning narration, understanding narration, and becoming narration are the classic three steps in crypto hype.
However, the generation of a narrative often originates from a fancy term, such as intent-centric, modularization, parallelization… Sounding concise and powerful, making people seem to understand but not really — that’s the sexy technical aesthetic that is desired.
But if you ask where these terms come from, the top VC Paradigm must be worthy of the title “wordsmith”.
In July last year, Paradigm introduced its top ten trends, among which the concept of intent-centric was first mentioned.
So the intent concept quickly became popular, and projects flocked to the buzzwords. The simple appeal of “making user experience better” can be beautifully packaged with just the word “intent”; and protocols based on intent became a must-have footnote for new projects’ Twitter profiles.
Recently, the wordsmith Paradigm made another move, with its CTO releasing an article titled “Reth’s path to 1 gigagas per second, and Beyond,” in which the key term is naturally “gigagas”.
Giga translates to a common unit of quantity, namely one billion or gigabytes; and gas is obviously the well-known gas fee.
But when the two words are combined — one billion gas?
Hmm, still that familiar feeling of concise and powerful, succinct, seemingly understandable yet impressive.
From TPS to GPS, the new standard set by the wordsmith
1 gigagas, VC rolling infrastructure on its own
The creation of words never stops, and customer acquisition has never begun
In fact, the newly proposed gigagas by Paradigm is related to blockchain performance.
In conventional thinking, we often talk about how fast a blockchain is in terms of TPS (transactions per second, i.e., the number of transactions that can be processed per second).
But Paradigm’s CTO believes that “Gas Per Second” (GPS) is a more precise measurement standard. This is because:
Measurement of computational workload
: Gas is the unit that measures the computational workload required to execute operations (such as transactions or smart contracts), so GPS can more accurately reflect the amount of computation the network can process per second.
Representation of capacity and efficiency
: Using GPS as a performance indicator can provide a clearer understanding of the capacity and efficiency of the blockchain, helping to evaluate system costs.
Defense against DOS attacks
: Standardizing performance metrics as GPS can better prevent potential Denial of Service (DOS) attacks, which could exploit less accurate metrics.
Cross-chain performance comparison
: Using GPS helps to compare the performance of different EVM-compatible chains, as different chains may have varying levels of computational complexity in transaction processing.
Therefore, using GPS instead of TPS to measure blockchain performance would be better, and Paradigm suggests that the EVM community should adopt the gas amount per second as a standard indicator, while combining other gas pricing dimensions to create a comprehensive performance standard.
Following Paradigm’s approach, evaluating the performance of the EVM network comprehensively based on the amount of gas consumed per second, while capturing computational and storage costs, the current mainstream L1 and L2 ranking by GPS should be as follows:
*Note by Deep Tide: The data in the table indicates milligas, which is “one-thousandth of a gas”. The larger the value, the greater the computational capacity of the blockchain network per second, and hence the better the performance. According to the table data, opBNB is the highest among all listed networks.
This means that compared to other blockchain networks, opBNB in the article is able to execute more computations in a unit of time, process more or more complex transactions and smart contracts. However, the evaluation of performance should also consider other factors such as network security, decentralization, and fee structure.
However, what Paradigm wants to achieve goes beyond the numbers in the table, aiming to achieve 1 gigagas with GPS, meaning that the blockchain can consume 1 billion units of gas per second.
In earlier years, Paradigm began developing Reth, an Ethereum execution client, using Rust.
The goal of Reth is to optimize execution performance, increase the number of “gas” units that can be processed per second, thereby enhancing the overall performance of the Ethereum network.
Based on publicly available data from the article, Reth is already able to achieve 100-200MB of gas per second (including sender recovery, transaction execution, and calculating the trie for each block); therefore, to achieve the goal of 1 Gigagas per second, an additional 10x expansion is required.
The method proposed by Paradigm is to vertically and horizontally scale the Reth they have developed.
As for how to specifically scale, because this part is too technical and not suitable for ordinary readers, we have simplified it here for a quick understanding.
Vertical scaling, like putting a more powerful engine or adding more memory to a machine, allows it to handle more workload. The main purpose is to enhance the processing capacity of the original single server or node.
Specific methods that Paradigm can think of include:
JIT/AOT EVM:
By using Just-In-Time (JIT) or Ahead-Of-Time (AOT) compilation of EVM, the overhead of the EVM interpreter is reduced, thereby speeding up the processing of single-threaded transactions. It is claimed to cut the execution time in half.
Parallel EVM:
Utilizing multi-core processors to execute EVM, more transactions can be processed simultaneously. This is because historically up to 80% of EVM transactions have no conflicting dependencies and can be executed in parallel.
Parallel, Pipeline, Modified State Roots:
Reducing the cost of calculating state roots. Calculating state roots accounts for the majority of block time, over 75%, so optimizing this aspect is a key step in significantly improving efficiency.
While horizontal scaling is akin to adding more processing units to a system, much like adding more production lines in a large factory. By adding more processing units to share the workload, the overall capacity of the system can be expanded without increasing the pressure on individual nodes.
Specific methods that Paradigm can think of include:
Multiple Rollup Reth:
Reducing the operational overhead when running multiple rollups, meaning that multiple rollups can be launched in the same process, thus minimizing the operational cost of running thousands of rollups.
Cloud-Native Reth:
By distributing tasks to multiple machines, capacity is expanded. This is similar to cloud computing architecture, allowing the system to automatically scale as needed, using cloud object storage to persist data.
If you don’t understand all of this, it’s okay. We just need to understand that:
Paradigm developed an Ethereum client, proposed a new standard for measuring EVM performance, and aims to increase this new standard (GPS) to 1 gigagas through various means.
VC leads the way in rolling out infrastructure and stacking performance, ultimately achieving much faster execution efficiency than existing Ethereum and other EVM public chains, allowing the blockchain to consume more gas units per unit time, handle more tasks, and pave the way for the chain to support large-scale applications.
From this, it can also be seen that while Paradigm invests money in others to develop L1/L2 solutions, they also invest in performance development themselves, making infrastructure better from multiple angles.
Obviously, gigagas is a more hardcore concept, not something anyone can just jump into like intent.
Perhaps in the future, various L1/L2 chains will demonstrate their performance capabilities reaching 1 gigagas or even more; however, application layer projects may not be directly related to this term.
Nevertheless, in the absence of a narrative, having one more concept means one more opportunity to grab attention.
Professor Pan also pointed out keenly that creating crypto terms needs to be easy to read, easy to understand, and original. From this perspective, gigagas meets several conditions and does indeed appear novel.
However, with so many L1/L2 solutions and new stories and concepts about performance emerging, where are the standout applications after the rush?
Or is it only when the infrastructure is strong enough that applications will eventually emerge, so everyone should focus on infrastructure first?
In the author’s view, the importance of gigagas may not be as significant as gigauser (one billion users). Perhaps performance is a prerequisite for achieving user scale, but performance does not necessarily guarantee users.
Real improvements in user experience and user influx for crypto products still have a long way to go.
This article is authorized and reprinted from Deep Tide TechFlow.