MultiversX's Supernova Upgrade Decouples Consensus from Transaction Execution

High-performance blockchain designs often face a structural trade-off between execution and consensus. To address this, research teams have been pushing improvements in finality and block propagation, but execution has become the next bottleneck to redesign.

MultiversX, a participant in the Cointelegraph Decentralization Guardians (CTDG) ecosystem, is testing an approach that decouples consensus from transaction execution. Its Supernova upgrade reorders the block workflow so proposers submit transaction blocks without executing first, while validators can vote immediately based on protocol validity.

Execution output is confirmed in subsequent block headers, with execution lagging consensus by roughly one block (about 600 milliseconds). A 'virtual mempool state' helps preserve validity by tracking pending nonces, expected balance consumption, and transactions already proposed but not yet executed.