Delay Analysis of EIP-4844

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model to evaluate the delay of blob-carrying transactions in Ethereum's EIP-4844, showing how data size and frequency affect network performance and scalability improvements.

Contribution

It introduces a queueing-theoretic model for analyzing delays in EIP-4844 transactions, providing insights into scalability and performance trade-offs.

Findings

Higher blob size increases transaction delay.

More frequent transactions reduce delay.

Model helps optimize transaction parameters for scalability.

Abstract

Proto-Danksharding, proposed in Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844 (EIP-4844), aims to incrementally improve the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain by introducing a new type of transaction known as blob-carrying transactions. These transactions incorporate binary large objects (blobs) of data that are stored off-chain but referenced and verified on-chain to ensure data availability. By decoupling data availability from transaction execution, Proto-Danksharding alleviates network congestion and reduces gas fees, laying the groundwork for future, more advanced sharding solutions. This letter provides an analytical model to derive the delay for these new transactions. We model the system as an $\mathrm{M/D}^B/1$ queue which we then find its steady state distribution through embedding a Markov chain and use of supplementary variable method. We show that transactions with more blobs but less frequent impose higher delays on the system compared to lower blobs but more frequent.