Where Should I Deploy My Contracts? A Practical Experience Report

2025-04-13

AI Summary

This paper addresses the deployment decision challenges faced by smart contract developers in multi-chain and Layer-2 (L2) environments. We propose the first empirical, cross-layer (Ethereum L1 vs. Arbitrum/Optimism L2) and cross-provider (Alchemy/Infura) evaluation framework. Using two representative DApp archetypes—voting (security-critical) and supply chain (cost-sensitive)—we systematically quantify latency, transaction success rate, gas fee volatility, and throughput stability. Our findings indicate that for high-security applications, Ethereum L1 with Infura yields the lowest failure rate and highest stability; for cost-sensitive use cases, Optimism L1 offers a 92% reduction in gas costs. Crucially, we demonstrate that “effective throughput stability”—rather than peak TPS—is a more actionable metric for deployment decisions. The framework delivers a practice-driven, multi-metric decision guide for onchain application deployment, integrating real-world infrastructure constraints and performance trade-offs across layers and providers.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Planning with Language Models

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Cost models of using LLMs in production systems
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web

Abstract

Blockchain networks provide a reliable trust anchor to decentralized applications (DApps) backed by smart contracts. The Ethereum ecosystem now encompasses most blockchain networks that provide compatible support for smart contracts code. Recently, many Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) rollup solutions emerged, meant to scale the base Layer 1 (L1) network, consequently decreasing transaction fees and diversifying the usage scenarios. Furthermore, the number of blockchain providers that offer access to the network infrastructure for both L1 and L2 continuously increases. A developer is faced with a multitude of deployment options and must weigh between the gains in costs and the losses in trust that are still an issue with L2. A decisive factor in this trade-off can be the use case itself, depending on its security requirements. Still, the evaluation of costs and performance cannot be ignored and should rely on a set of measurable metrics, although choosing the right metrics can be complicated. In this practical experience report, we explore the relevance of several such metrics in choosing between different providers and rollups. For this purpose, we perform evaluations for two use cases of DApps: a voting DApp with high security demands, suited for L1 deployment, and a cost-sensitive supply chain DApp, where L2 can be an option. We analyze a set of basic metrics by comparing these between two highly used access providers, Alchemy and Infura, for the L1 deployment case, and between two of the most popular rollups, Arbitrum One and OP Mainnet (Optimism), for the L2 deployment scenario.

Problem

• Evaluating deployment options for smart contracts across L1 and L2 networks
• Comparing cost and performance metrics for different blockchain providers
• Assessing security and cost trade-offs for DApp use cases

Innovation

• Evaluates Ethereum L1 and L2 deployment options
• Compares Alchemy and Infura for L1 metrics
• Analyzes Arbitrum and Optimism for L2 performance