Systems and methods related to processing transaction verification operations in decentralized applications via a fixed pipeline hardware architecture are described herein. The fixed pipeline architecture may be included within a decoupled system architecture comprising a computer system configured to execute smart contracts and a physically separate hardware device configured to perform transaction verification operations. The computer system may be configured to maintain a read-only copy of a ledger shared by a plurality of nodes on a peer-to-peer network, and the hardware device may be configured to perform transaction verification operations. As such, the decoupled system architecture provides added security and privacy for the system and the ledger by preventing malicious smart contracts from accessing and/or updating the modifiable copy of the verified ledger.