Benchmarking

Tools and techniques for gas benchmarking and performance tracing of CoW Protocol smart contracts

Benchmarking

Tools and techniques for measuring and optimizing gas consumption in CoW Protocol smart contracts.

Benchmark Commands

Full Suite

Execute the complete benchmark suite across settlement scenarios:

yarn bench

Execution Tracing

Generate detailed execution traces identifying gas consumption patterns:

yarn bench:trace

Tracing reveals:

• Call stack hierarchy
• Per-operation gas consumption
• Storage operations
• External calls
• Event emission expenses

Version Comparison

Compare performance between code versions:

yarn bench:compare [ref]

The comparison script performs five steps:

1. Stash current changes
2. Benchmark current code
3. Check out reference commit
4. Benchmark reference code
5. Generate differential report

Interpreting results:

• Positive values indicate regressions (increased gas)
• Negative values show improvements (decreased gas)

Single Scenario

Test individual settlement scenarios:

yarn bench:single

Optimization Strategy

Follow a structured five-phase approach:

1. Establish baseline - Measure current gas consumption
2. Identify hotspots - Use tracing to find expensive operations
3. Implement improvements - Target specific gas-heavy operations
4. Verify gains - Compare against baseline measurements
5. Comprehensive testing - Ensure correctness is maintained

Compiler Configuration

The project compiler prioritizes execution costs:

Setting	Value	Rationale
Optimizer	Enabled	Gas efficiency
Optimizer Runs	1,000,000	Favor execution over deployment
EVM Version	Cancun	Latest EVM features

Best Practices

• Ensure clean builds without coverage instrumentation before benchmarking
• Use a stable environment (same machine, similar load)
• Run multiple iterations for consistent results
• Compare against known reference points
• Document significant performance changes

Coverage instrumentation alters contract bytecode and gas costs. Always benchmark against clean, non-instrumented builds.