When smart contracts launch, will every node on the network have to run every contract transaction?

Question

When smart contracts launch, will every node (relay and producer) have to execute all contracts executions, and therefore all see the same increase in resource usage?

My inkling is that they have to (to ensure the blocks are valid), although I wondered if there was some clever way to avoid this I hadn't considered.

Answer 1

The validation of the state change of a smart contact in the eUTXO model is done when accepting the transaction. When a node validates a transaction, the node determines if the transaction is allowed to use a certain output as an input. The transaction will look up the script provided by the output's address and will execute the script if the transaction can use the output as an input. The node can validate multiple transactions in parallel if they are not consuming the same input.

References:

• https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/04/13/plutus-what-you-need-to-know/
• https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/03/11/cardanos-extended-utxo-accounting-model/
• https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/03/12/cardanos-extended-utxo-accounting-model-part-2/