This Computer Science Breakthrough Could Reshape the Digital Economy
Through the most advanced validation of Adaptive State Sharding, Elrond Network makes decentralization, without any lapse in security, a reality for the masses. Elrond can enable the first network scalable enough to sustain the through demands of the smart cities of the future.
Blockchain technology successfully penetrated mainstream airways in 2017. Most of the mass media exposure, though, focused on the net market cap of all cryptocurrencies, which nearly reached the trillion-dollar milestone. While this sudden popularity of cryptocurrencies led to an influx of speculators, a few recognized the incredible underlying value of blockchain technology and the benefits it could yield to the world, and these people became a part of the few ICOs that delivered their promises.
Incredible decentralized applications and protocols are in existence. Decentralized exchanges can potentially bring liquidity to any asset market, data trade protocols can enhance machine learning, and, perhaps most importantly, decentralized currencies ensure people have true ownership of their wealth. However, even though many of the developments in the blockchain space offer undeniable value, they remain either unutilized or severely underutilized. The problem is no longer awareness as blockchain technology has received and continues to receive an incredible amount of exposure in mass media. The cause of the underwhelming adoption of blockchain technology is primarily attributed to the existing networks’ inability to support a larger user base.
Major blockchains, like Ethereum, can handle an extremely limited number of transactions per second. The result of this is that even if enterprises or consumers are attracted to a specific application, they’re quickly put off by the poor user experience associated with the lack of scalability.
Blockchains have to be scalable. There’s a misnomer in the blockchain sector around the need to sacrifice decentralization or security when pursuing scalability. This is a part of the blockchain “Scalability Trilemma,” as explained by Vitalik Buterin. The Trilemma is an assertion that blockchains must sacrifice at least one of the following:
(1) Decentralization: Being able to support nodes with limited resources, i.e. household laptop
(2) Scalability: Scaling linearly
(3) Security: Possessing a consensus mechanism that can thwart attackers.
If the blockchain “Scalability Trilemma” cannot be overcome, then blockchain technology cannot deliver a significant use case. Thus, Elrond Network, which is on its way to being the first blockchain to successfully tackle the Trilemma, is on the verge of achieving a significant milestone in the development and mass-utility of decentralized networks.
Elrond Network is the most advanced realization of Adaptive State Sharding. The use of sharding to improve network scalability is an often-proposed concept. However, present developments have only approached state sharding, which is a propagation of network storage needs across network shards.
State sharding, alone, is not sufficient.
Thus, Elrond Network has integrated Adaptive State Sharding, which aggregates the benefits of state sharding, transaction sharding, and communication sharding. While state sharding distributes the storage burden, transaction sharding distributes the transaction processing and communication sharding propagates messages into smaller partitions. A live blockchain involves communication between nodes, data storage, and transaction processing. Present network bottlenecks are associated with one or all of these factors. To truly achieve scalability, Elrond Network tackled the scalability problems faced with each factor.
With Adaptive State Sharding, Elrond network is able to deliver over 3,750 transactions per second per shard. As state sharding limits the storage burden and transaction sharding limits the computational burden that an individual node would face, Elrond Network is able to support active nodes sourced from a mere household laptop. These nodes, which become a part of a shard, can be activated to linearly scale the network whenever throughput demand grows.
Through Elrond Network’s scalable throughput and ability to maintain a decentralized ecosystem that can support a large base of active network participants, blockchain technology can enable the cities of the future. Smart cities, which integrate incredible volumes of data transactions between autonomous devices and constant automated transfers of value within the devices, can be a reality through the use of Adaptive State Sharding. The creation of true decentralized exchanges which can bring liquidity to virtually any asset class can be possible with Adaptive State Sharding, as the linear scalability attribute could allow the network to match — even surpass — the throughput of modern centralized exchange engines.
Importantly, Elrond Network’s ability to deliver a blockchain in which anyone can run a node with the same degree of simplicity and ease faced when running a web browser will ensure that the smart cities of tomorrow are able to seamlessly integrate human transactions and communication whenever needed. Thus, this is a network that can deliver utility to both the internet of things and the internet of humans.
On a closing note, Elrond Network’s strategic partnerships with NASH and NETOPIA Payments are a testament to this blockchain’s ability to deliver novel solutions to the masses. Elrond Network is designed to handle the demands of even the most advanced blockchain-enabled applications and software while withstanding the growing network demands the blockchain will naturally attract. Visit more at https://elrond.com/