Not a fair comparison. You're creating an entirely new SV every time, whereas the OP was using an existing ref. 
$Contracts{$key}[STATE]

[download]
vs 
my $r = $Contracts{$key};
$r->[STATE]

[download]
is not similar to 
$Contracts{$key}

[download]
vs 
my $r = \$Contracts{$key};
$$r

[download]

Update:

My benchmark: 

use strict;
use warnings;

use Benchmark qw( cmpthese );

use constant NUM_KEYS     => $ARGV[0];
use constant NUM_ACCESSES => $ARGV[1];
use constant TEST_TIME    => $ARGV[2];

our %contracts = map { $_ => [ 0 ] } 1 .. NUM_KEYS;

my $lookup = '
   foreach (keys %contracts) {
      _____
  }
';
$lookup =~ s/_____/'$a = $contracts{$_}[0];' x NUM_ACCESSES/e;

my $refit = '
   foreach (keys %contracts) {
      my $r = $contracts{$_};
      _____
  }
';
$refit =~ s/_____/'$a = $r->[0];' x NUM_ACCESSES/e;

cmpthese(TEST_TIME, {
   lookup => $lookup,
   refit  => $refit,
});

[download]
My results: 
>perl 586841.pl 500 4 -5
         Rate lookup  refit
lookup 1060/s     --    -4%
refit  1101/s     4%     --

>perl 586841.pl 500 4 -5
         Rate lookup  refit
lookup 1053/s     --    -5%
refit  1105/s     5%     --


>perl 586841.pl 500 6 -5
        Rate lookup  refit
lookup 772/s     --   -11%
refit  869/s    13%     --

>perl 586841.pl 500 6 -5
        Rate lookup  refit
lookup 775/s     --   -11%
refit  873/s    13%     --


>perl 586841.pl 500 10 -5
        Rate lookup  refit
lookup 496/s     --   -19%
refit  614/s    24%     --

>perl 586841.pl 500 10 -5
        Rate lookup  refit
lookup 499/s     --   -19%
refit  613/s    23%     --

[download]

Verdict: It's a fruitful optimization, but it's not ground breaking.

In reply to Re^2: Ref to hash entries are faster? by ikegami
in thread Ref to hash entries are faster? by Wiggins

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