Ethereum Developer Announces That Sharding Is Coming
Vitalik Buterin, ethereum developer has revealed that the much awaited scaling solution for the ethereum blockchain protocol, Sharding is coming soon.
Basically, Sharding is a solution that enhances the verification process of transactions and smart contracts by separating the blockchain network into partitions known as shards. Rather than having every single node go through the entire transaction history of the Ethereum blockchain network, Sharding permits particular nodes to be assigned to certain shards, enhancing the process of nodes verification transactions.
Earlier on, James Ray, an Ethereum developer working on a scaling solution dubbed Drops of Diamond, noted that the requirement of nodes to verify all transactions in a blockchain network hinders the ability of the blockchain to scale.
He explained, “In large part because of this, Bitcoin is limited to ~3-7 transactions per second, Ethereum to 7-15, etc. However, this poses a question: are there ways to create a new mechanism, where the only small subset of nodes verifies each transaction?”
Different from bitcoin, Litecoin and other payment-focused blockchain networks, blockchain protocols such as Cardano, Ethereum, and EOS require a larger blockchain capacity and flexible network as they support large-scale decentralized applicants.
In this light, Buterin announced a proof of concept of Sharding uploaded to GitHub and implied that the development of Sharding id close on social media, as he explained, “Sharding is coming.”
Buterin released a more in-depth description of the proof of concept on Reddit Ethereum, an online community wherein Ethereum users, investors, enthusiast, and developers talked about several projects and solutions.
Based on Buterin, the essential idea of the present version of Shading’s proof of concept revolves around the implementation of a proof-off-stake beacon chain, which is blended into the main Ethereum blockchain network.
“The basic idea is based on a concept of dependent fork choice rules. First, there is a proof of stake beacon chain (in phase 4, aka full casper, this will just be merged into the main chain), which is tied to the main chain; every beacon chain block must specify a recent main chain block, and that beacon chain block being part of the canonical chain is conditional on the referenced main chain block being part of the canonical main chain,” explained Buterin.
He went on to state that the proof-of-stake beacon with Sharding makes it possible for the release of new blocks every two to eight seconds, which is relatively faster than previous proof-of-work blockchains such as bitcoin which has an average block time of 10 minutes.
