Reflecting on 2024 and Shaping the Future of Besu

2024 was a significant year for the LF Decentralized Trust project Besu, marked by groundbreaking advancements and ambitious plans for the future. Let’s take a journey through the highlights of what we achieved and how we’re building on that momentum in 2025.

Innovating for Ethereum Developers

Parallel Transaction Processing

This year saw the introduction of parallel transaction processing, a major milestone for improving execution times across both L1 and L2 use cases. While the impact is already significant, further refinements are underway to maximize its potential. Learn more.

Modularizing Besu

To enhance Besu’s adaptability and scalability, we’re extending our modular plug-in architecture to unlock new possibilities for customization. This design approach allows developers to extend and modify Besu’s functionality without altering its core codebase, creating a highly flexible and modular Ethereum client.

This architecture opens the door for both industry and community members to develop plug-ins like Fleet for Besu, which simplifies RPC scaling by enabling rapid deployment of Besu nodes tailored for RPC traffic. This commercial plug-in-based solution not only addresses scaling challenges but also demonstrates the power of modularization in providing specialized capabilities. Learn more.

Performance Breakthroughs

Performance was a central theme in 2024. By focusing on detailed profiling and benchmarking, both from within the Besu team and from other Ethereum client teams, we achieved:

• Introduce optimistic parallel transaction execution 
• Optimizations in ECMUL operations. Credit to arewefastyet report and Nethermind
• Improve SelfBalance opcode performance by at least 2X
• Efficient resource management with smart selective functionality (including disabling the tx pool) during syncing
• Improve high spec flag by reducing memory footprint and keeping the same impact on performance
• Preprocess transaction sender in parallel, which helps to reduce block processing time
• Optimize eth_sendRawTransaction 
• Improve block processing performance by cleaning the bonsai accumulator 
• Improved flat trace generation 
• Faster genesis state initialization for permissioned chains

Optimizing for Solo Stakers

Solo stakers benefited from several key Besu updates:

• Receipt Compaction: Reduced storage size for receipts by about 70GB.
• Bonsai Limit Trie Logs: Default retention of the latest 512 trie logs saves approximately 3GB per week and saves some users up to 300GB disk space in total.
• Snap Sync Server: Improved syncing capabilities.

Focusing on L2s and Permissioned Networks

Streamlining L2 Operations

We’re doubling down on the mainnet focus for core Besu and adding to Besu’s plugin API as we add functionality and features for L2s. More to come on this in 2025.

• Transaction Pool Enhancements: The Sequenced Tx Pool offers greater flexibility for L2 and permissioned networks.
• Block Building and Processing: Performance improvements to support complex use cases.
• Blob Support Enhancements: Improved metrics, logging, and transaction pool compatibility.
• State Overrides for eth_call: Enhanced tx simulation support.

Tailored Solutions for Permissioned Networks

• Support for emptyBlockPeriodSeconds in QBFT
• QBFT and Snap Sync compatibility for seamless integration
• Bonsai Archive (WIP)

2025: The Road Ahead

Building on 2024’s momentum, we’re setting ambitious goals for Besu in 2025:

Reducing Node Storage Requirements Further

• Implementing EIP-4444 and Portal Network Support
• Supporting Era1, making nodes more efficient and accessible

Expanding Plugin Ecosystem

• Enabling and collaborating on bespoke plugins for Fleet Mode, L2s, and Linea.
• Enhancing API design and technical documentation to empower community-driven plugin creation.

Key Initiatives

• Bonsai-Backed Archive Nodes for efficient data access.
• Improved Syncing Time to improve staker experience.
• Production-Ready Snap Sync Server to streamline onboarding.
• Further refinements in Parallel Transaction Processing.

Performance Metrics and Future Goals

We’ve embedded performance metrics into our release process to track and improve Besu across both mainnet and L2 scenarios. Key focus areas for 2025 include:

• Block processing efficiency.
• Memory management during syncing.
• Enhanced RPC performance.

Join the Conversation

As we shape the future of Besu, your voice matters. Share your feedback and let us know how we can make Besu even better, join the discussion on Discord. Together, we’ll create a thriving ecosystem for developers and stakers alike.