What Is The Future Of Scalability For Blockchains?

Introduction

When you hear the word “blockchain,” what do you think of? An umbrella? A cake? No, it’s neither of those things. It’s the technology that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which means its potential uses are far beyond just buying coffee with cryptocurrency. But what exactly is blockchain and why does it matter? Here we’ll take a look at what blockchain technology is, how it works and how it can be improved for large-scale applications.

What is scalability?

Scalability is the ability of a system, network or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged in order to accommodate that growth. This can be measured by looking at how much work the system can perform within a given time period, such as transactions per second (TPS). It should be noted that scalability is different from capacity; while capacity refers to how much data can be stored on a blockchain or how many users are supported by it, scalability refers specifically to whether there will be enough throughput (or bandwidth) for everyone who wants to use it at once.

Scalability is typically measured using metrics like TPS and Throughput Capacity(TC).

How does blockchain differ from traditional systems?

The main difference between a blockchain and traditional systems is that the latter are centralized and have a single point of failure. This means that if one part of your system fails, then it can bring down the entire operation.

In contrast to this, blockchains are decentralized–meaning there’s no single entity responsible for overseeing or maintaining them. Instead, there are many different computers (nodes) throughout the network that work together in unison to verify transactions and store data securely on an immutable ledger (or database). This makes blockchains far more resilient than traditional systems because if one computer goes offline due to malfunctioning hardware or software issues; another will automatically take over its role within seconds without affecting any other parts of the network at all!

To understand how this happens let’s look at an example: say you want send money from one person A-to-B but instead choose route through bank C because it seems cheaper than using credit card company D even though both banks offer similar services like insurance etcetera.. In theory everything should work fine here since both companies have agreed upon terms beforehand but what happens if suddenly D decides not honor those agreements anymore? Well then obviously nothing good comes outta this situation since now A has lost trust towards B so maybe try contacting someone else instead..

Blockchain scalability challenges

Blockchain scalability challenges

Blockchains are not designed to scale. The design of blockchains is such that a fixed number of transactions can be processed at any given time, which means that as more people use the network and more transactions are being made, there will be backlogs and delays in processing them. This also results in higher transaction fees.

There are several ways you can increase the throughput/capacity:

• Increase block size; this increases data storage requirements but doesn’t change computation power requirements
• Increase block interval (time between blocks); this decreases latency but increases orphan rates (blocks found by miners first get discarded if another miner finds an earlier version before anyone else has seen the first miner’s version)

Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithms

Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) are two different types of consensus algorithms. PoW is a type of algorithm that is used in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin among others. It uses mining power to solve complex mathematical problems in order to add blocks onto the blockchain and create new coins.

On the other hand, PoS is another kind of consensus algorithm where miners stake their coins as collateral when they want to add blocks onto the blockchain; if they are successful then they get rewarded with more coins but if they fail then all their staked coins will be lost forever!

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) is a consensus algorithm that combines the advantages of both PoW and PoS. It was introduced in 2016 by Daniel Larimer, founder of Steemit, Lisk and EOS. DPoS allows network members to elect delegates who are tasked with validating transactions and maintaining network integrity. The delegates are voted into place by token holders through a continuous approval voting system where users can vote for any number of candidates but only have one vote each.

If you’re interested in learning more about this approach to blockchain scalability, check out our article on EOS here!

Sharding and Sidechains for scalability.

Sharding is a technique that allows a blockchain to process transactions in parallel. This means that the nodes on the network can process different sets of transactions at the same time, which makes it possible for blockchains to scale much more efficiently.

Sidechains are separate blockchains that communicate with each other via pegged chains or two-way pegs (a special kind of smart contract). For example, if you have an Ethereum sidechain and want to use some tokens on it, your wallet will create a transaction on your main Ethereum chain and send it over to another one by creating a new contract with some custom rules about how those particular tokens should behave within its ecosystem.

While there are several promising solutions that can help solve the problems of scalability in blockchains, only time will tell which one will be implemented first

While there are several promising solutions that can help solve the problems of scalability in blockchains, only time will tell which one will be implemented first.

One solution is sharding, which divides a blockchain into different segments or shards. Each shard operates independently from each other and only verifies transactions within its own network. This allows them to process transactions faster than a single blockchain would be able to do on its own–but it also means that you’ll have multiple copies of your data across multiple networks at once! This could lead to some pretty serious security risks if not handled correctly–but who knows? Maybe someday we’ll all have our own private blockchains with their own private data systems…

Conclusion

There are many different solutions being proposed to solve the problem of scalability in blockchains. Some of these solutions, like sharding and sidechains, are still in their early stages of development and have yet to be implemented on any blockchain network. Other solutions like Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithms have been around for a while but they both suffer from certain drawbacks which make them less than ideal when compared against each other.