1. We firmly believe that achieving superior performance in distributed transactions is impossible without first ensuring strong key-value load performance.
2. As mentioned in our paper, other distributed SQL databases also utilize the YCSB benchmark. You might be interested in the YugabyteDB vs. CockroachDB comparison we referenced.
3. Distributed databases are complex, comprising multiple layers. Though a key-value load is relatively simple to comprehend, it still allows for the performance evaluation of various layers like the transport layer, GRPC, underlying storage, and so forth. We make extensive use of this type of load in our attempts to identify and eliminate different bottlenecks.
We're currently preparing more benchmarks and look forward to sharing our findings soon.