Blockchain’s outreach is expanding by the minute and lamentably the technology is held back by its limitation. While there is vast scope for blockchain solutions (decentralization and disintermediation) of many services and systems, it still remains theoretical for most parts due to both technical and cost-related restrictions.
While most cryptocurrency and blockchain-based applications reduce companies’ hardware cost of developing them; they, in turn, increase the cost of maintenance. In addition, scaling becomes significantly harder due to the intense resource needs of hosting an ever-expanding distributed ledger on every node.
These problems are definitely not going unnoticed and many existing blockchain technology based platforms have started looking for a suitable solution. The aim is to offer an infrastructure that allows blockchain platform to scale to meet increasing demand and hence increase the number of “Transactions Per Second (TPS)”. Successively, than only the blockchain technology could be spread across a wider audience. The application mentioned below are some of the more intriguing scalability projects to watch for.
Ethereum has garnered much love and appreciation, for one due to the development of DApps (decentralized applications) and that it offers, in theory, a more stable version of bitcoin’s restrictive blockchain and consensus methods. However, the “CryptoKitties” fiasco prooved that Ethereum blockchain can also run into scalability issues.
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum identifies Plasma as a viable solution. Plasma technology enables users to create “child” blockchains, that branch off from the main Ethereum blockchain. These micro-chains created by users host specific transactions and removes much strain on the Ethereum network, which in turn makes it easier to scale Ethereum for greater real-world applications. The best part of Plasma is that it is being designed to stack on top of Ethereum and will work alongside other new technologies. Atleast three Plasma-related projects are slated to release over the near future.
Also Read:- Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum Will Achieve 1 Million Transactions Per Second via Sharding and Plasma
The EOS.io does not build a blockchain on which applications can be launched and hosted, instead, the team builts something like an operating system which lets users piece together their own DApps and blockchains using a system-wide universal template. It has already been much appreciated for its scalable ecosystem for dapp development, its disconnect from the major bitcoin and Ethereum chains and its creative design.
EOS uses a variety of tools that enable it to be significantly lighter than Ethereum and easier to scale. For one, DPoS, Delegated Proof of Stake consensus reduces the time taken to verify transactions, making it simpler to process more transactions in substantially lesser time.
The beauty of EOS is that it is built specifically to deal with the biggest issues limiting scalability – the transaction speeds and the number of transactions the system can process. While Bitcoin and Ethereum manage roughly around 7 and 15 transactions per second respectively, EOS claims to have the capacity to process nearly 50,000 transactions per second.
Another intriguing feature is that EOS allows for both vertical scaling (adding more processing power) and horizontal scaling (adding more machines to the resource pool). Which implies parallel processing so DApps can operate simultaneously without fighting for the same resources. In late July, EOSIO 1.0 was officially launched at the end of the company’s phase 3 and has received a warm welcome. The phase 4 will take the rest of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, and is expected to add some of the key features touted from the outset.
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Sharding is one of the more exciting developments in today’s blockchain field. As the name suggests, it breaks down large sets of data into smaller “shards.” These shards can be processed independently and could be regrouped as per the need. While the model is still at least a few years away from full implementation, Zilliqa has managed to take the lead.
An already released version of its infrastructure that has illustrated a tremendous potential for scalability and dApp development. Zilliqa offers a significantly higher throughput to the developers. This is due to its hybrid consensus mechanism, which is based heavily on sharding to both reduce strain on the existing blockchain. Theoretically, this adds more speed as more nodes are connected to the network. In practice, Zilliqa shards the data workload for every 600 nodes that join. Implying that Zilliqa’s ecosystem speeds up exponentially when more nodes join their networks, whereas Ethereum or bitcoin are bogged down significantly.
Zilliqa has already achieved its unicorn status in early 2018, thanks to its successful proof-of-concept, leading up to the launch of their mainnet product by the fourth quarter.
Also Read: ‘Etheremon’ Gaming DApp Dumps Ethereum and Moves to Zilliqa
An important metric in the blockchain scalability conversation is Transactions Per Second (TPS) and QuarkChain claims a massive number at that. The company estimates that once fully operational, QuarkChain network should be able to process 1 million TPS. A capacity that is above and beyond the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks and even above Visa’s approximately 65,000 TPS.
Basically, QuarkChain works as a two-layer solution, where one is a blockchain created for sharding purposes and handling the verification of transactions. The second layer or a root chain confirms the processed blocks from shards before appending them to the chain. While the company reports that QuarkChain managed up to 2,000 TPS in the testing phase, this has not been officially verified by independent observers and auditors.
To achieve the whopping 1 million figure, the company still needs to scale few levels. Their next target after the 2,000 TPS (alleged) is 100,000 metric.With this target achieved, QuarkChain will mark the single greatest leap in blockchain scalability since Ethereum was launched.
These projects are far from the only ones working to create a better and more viable blockchain ecosystem, but they are some of the more promising solutions. As companies gradually tackle this challenge, blockchain technology will face a much easier road towards mass adoption and put the true disruptive potential on display.
The many disparate blockchains that are constantly being built and launched might have vast potential, but they also create a problem for scalability on the blockchain network. They tend to limit real growth as they form smaller silos and add to market fragmentation. Here’s come in the role of AION.
AION is a multi-tier blockchain solution, which should be able to improve cross-chain communication and concurrently delivers an easier strategy for scaling and developing faster blockchain solutions.
The most intriguing part of AION is that the developers could create both private and public chains that branch off the project’s proprietary AION-1 chain. These chains will be fully customizable and can structure their own governance. Notably, built-in interoperability allows these chains to easily communicate with the Ethereum chain without having to reside on-chain. This enables blockchains to scale more easily as they are not dependant on the shared processing power of a single chain, while they can still reap the benefits of the legacy chains. The AION-1 chain is built specifically as a foundation that does not store all the individual transactions of each chain, which makes it comparably lightweight.
With the core of its phase one (“Kilimanjaro”) completed, which included creating their basic APIs and core framework, the company is set to implement its Phase two (“Denali”) solutions by the end of the year.
Also Read: Aion To Facilitate Communication Between Different Blockchain Networks Get latest crypto news and updates on KryptoMoney.com
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