Stylus Benchmarks

This code repository aims to benchmark the gas costs between EVM and Stylus contracts for ERC20 tokens.

Findings

ERC20 Functions

Function	Stylus (WASM)	Solidity (Shanghai EVM)
fund/mint	36345	34123
transfer	37417	35000
approve	31573	27005
transferFrom	44683	41212

ED25519

	Stylus (WASM)	Solidity (Shanghai EVM)
verify	184188 (-81%)	975582

Note: https://github.com/chengwenxi/Ed25519/tree/main was used for the EVM implementation of ED25519 verification

• ERC20 and other contracts whose gas costs come predominantly from storage operations will not benefit greatly from Stylus contracts
• Purely computational contracts (e.g. ED25519 verification) would significantly benefit from Stylus as it would drastically lower the gas costs compared to an EVM implementation
• We are observing a ~81% reduction in gas costs in the case of a naive (non-optimised) WASM implementation of ED25519 verification compared to an EVM implementation

Important

1. The code shown in this repository is for demonstration purposes only and is not production-ready. It is meant to showcase the gas cost differences between the Stylus VM and the EVM.

2. The code used in the Stylus VM is a naive implementation and is not optimized. It is important to consider this when interpreting the benchmark results.

3. Benchmark was run based on the following gas schedule for Stylus which as of this writing is not yet on testnet!

Reproducing Benchmarks

Prepare the environment

1. Compile the Stylus contracts

cargo build --package stylus-benchmark --release

2. Clone Arbitrum Nova development node

git clone -b stylus --recurse-submodules https://github.com/OffchainLabs/nitro-testnode.git && cd nitro-testnode

3. Run Local development node with Stylus support

./test-node.bash --init

4. Fund the users addresses

./test-node.bash script send-l2 --to address_0xf39fd6e51aad88f6f4ce6ab8827279cfffb92266 --ethamount 100

./test-node.bash script send-l2 --to address_0x70997970c51812dc3a010c7d01b50e0d17dc79c8 --ethamount 100

ERC20

1. Uncomment the erc20 file in the lib.rs, comment the ed25519 file

2. Deploy the erc20 contract

cargo stylus deploy -e http://localhost:8547 --private-key 0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80

3. Run the benches script - change the addresses of the ERC20 prior to launching the script

bash ./stylus-bench-erc20.sh

ED25519

1. Uncomment the ed25519 file in lib.rs, comment the erc20 file
2. Deploy the ed25519 verifier contract

cargo stylus deploy -e http://localhost:8547 --private-key 0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80

4. Execute the following cast

cast send --rpc-url http://localhost:8547 --gas-limit 1000000 --private-key 0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80 {CONTRACT_ADDRESS} "verify(bytes,bytes,bytes32)" 0xb0d8bdfd9f4d1023dae836b2e41da5019d20c60965dc40943e2c10f2ad4ee49ab0d8bdfd9f4d1023dae836b2e41da5019d20c60965dc 0xa6161c95fd4e3237b7dd12cc3052aaa69382510ecb5b89c2fbeb8b6efb78266b81160af2842235a0257fc1d3e968c2c1c9f56f117da3186effcaeda256c38a0d 0x06cf14cfae0ff9fe7fdf773202029a3e8976465c8919f4840d1c3c77c8162435