A :public table may or may not also be :named. An unnamed table can only be accessed using the table reference returned from :ets.new. Pass that reference to your child processes and only they will be able to work with the table.

Here’s some code that demonstrates this:

iex(1)> t = :ets.new(:secret_table, [:public])
#Reference<0.2500864750.288227330.231076>

iex(2)> spawn(fn -> IO.inspect :ets.lookup(:secret_table, :foo) end)
#PID<0.105.0>

10:13:17.716 [error] Process #PID<0.105.0> raised an exception
** (ArgumentError) argument error
    (stdlib) :ets.lookup(:secret_table, :foo)
    (stdlib) erl_eval.erl:680: :erl_eval.do_apply/6
    (stdlib) erl_eval.erl:888: :erl_eval.expr_list/6
    (stdlib) erl_eval.erl:411: :erl_eval.expr/5

iex(4)> spawn(fn -> IO.inspect :ets.lookup(t, :foo) end)
#PID<0.108.0>
[]

Unfortunately no. You can do some tricks using give_away but its really more trouble than its worth.

If the spawning process inherits the table won’t that make it the only process which can write to the table forcing a serialization point ?

I think you just got yourself a nice load testing project

At this point I’m not convince you are getting much gains over:

1. Serializing all writes through one GenServer or
2. Just making ets table public and allowing the child processes to write directly to it

You make (2) a bit more protected by not naming the table and passing the Tid down to the child processes.