Finding performance bottlenecks with Pyroscope and Alloy: An example using TON blockchain

This article details how continuous profiling with tools like Alloy and Pyroscope was used to analyze submissions from the TON blockchain optimization contest. By leveraging eBPF-based profiling, engineers were able to quickly pinpoint performance bottlenecks in C++ code – including within cryptographic operations like SHA256 and Ed25519 – without modifying the contestants’ code. The analysis revealed that even seemingly small optimizations, such as replacing data structures or crypto library implementations, could yield significant performance gains in a competitive blockchain environment.