Cell Balancing for Parallel Cells for Multi-series connected Packs

Hey Battery Team,

I have hopefully a quick question. I have a hypothetical system where there are 2S3P connected cells that look like the picture below:

Alright, I want to apply a battery balancing and protection IC, like the BQ29xxx series stuff. It looks like I have two possible ways to do this:

The first way is where I do a BQ29xxx per chain - it looks like :

Note: None of the batteries in the top row have their negative terminals connected together.

The other way is shown below, where a single BQ29xxx device is used to balance. However now all the batteries are connected parallel.

Now here's the question - which is the preferred method? Is the first method ever used in industry? It seems like the more efficient method.

Thank you,

-Rebel