Sharding (scalability) (22 oct. 2017 – 29 mars 2019)

Description:

Sharding — dividing a blockchain network into several smaller component networks (called shards) capable of processing transactions in parallel — is considered to be a promising way to achieve high throughputs comparable to the thousands of transactions per second of traditional payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard.

“You can think of [sharding] as, in a fairly simple version, creating a blockchain where you have, let’s say, a hundred different universes, and each of these universes is a different account space,” said Buterin. “So you can have an account in some universe or you can have a contract in some universe and you can send a transaction in some universe, and if you send a transaction in some universe it only affects stuff in some universe.

“But these kind of 100 universes are not just separate blockchains; they are systems that are also interconnected with each other,” continued Buterin. “Particularly, they share consensus. So in order to break even one of them, you have to break the whole thing.”

Buterin went on to describe relatively easy and more sophisticated ways to implement sharding in the Ethereum blockchain, outlining a sharding roadmap that foresees, at least initially, the creation of new “universes” that don’t impact the main chain while permitting iterative experimentation, such as introducing higher levels of scalability, starting with “quadratic scalability as nodes validate certain shards and act as light clients for other shards.”

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