Ethereum is the most popular smart contract ecosystem. It is also the most active DeFi network. Ethereum itself has a market capitalization of $217bn, while its DeFi sector has a TVL of $29bn. Despite these achievements, the network faces challenges related to scalability and transaction throughput.
As trading, lending, and other activities take place on-chain at an increasing rate, investors put enormous strain on Ethereum. The ecosystem, unable to handle all transactions, faces network congestion and forces users to – at times – pay hundreds of dollars per transaction.
The Ethereum Foundation has plans to address these challenges and increase its transaction throughput. Ethereum’s most anticipated solution is sharding, a proposed transaction processing model that involves dividing the network into smaller parts called shards.
In today’s article, I explain what sharding is and how it works. I also show you the potential benefits and challenges of implementing this innovative scaling solution. Read on to discover how Ethereum sharding could revolutionize the blockchain industry.
Ethereum sharding is a scalability solution that divides the network into smaller shards, each containing a subset of accounts, smart contracts, and transactions. Transactions are processed and stored on the shard in which they occur, rather than on the entire network.
Each shard has its own state and set of validators, making it possible to process transactions in parallel across multiple shards. Such a model reduces the strain placed on the overall network by processing portions of Ethereum transactions in smaller shards.
Validators on each shard are responsible for verifying transactions and maintaining the state of that shard. Validators are randomly assigned to shards, and they are required to have a stake in the network to participate. The more stake a validator has, the more likely they are to be selected to validate transactions.
The Ethereum network uses a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to ensure the security of the network. Validators are required to stake a certain amount of ETH as collateral to participate in the network. If they validate transactions correctly, they earn rewards, but if they act maliciously, they risk losing their stake.
Ethereum sharding has several benefits, including:
The greatest benefit that sharding offers is the ability to delegate the processing of transactions to smaller processing units. In computer science, the introduction of parallel processing had tremendous effects. Multi-core processors were able to carry out many more calculations than their single-core predecessors.
In this sense, scalability can be made possibly through the decentralization of transaction processing. Rather than improving Ethereum as a whole, we can use sharding to introduce smaller processing units that decrease Ethereum’s overall transaction load.
There are also some challenges associated with Ethereum sharding, including:
The reason why it’s taking developers years to implement sharding is that it’s incredibly complicated to do so. Although each shard is autonomous and independent, it cannot process transactions without having a communication line established with other shards. What if two or more shards process the same transaction without knowing?
Sharding also introduces new attack vectors that have several implications for Ethereum’s security. Malicious actors could potentially perform a single-shard takeover attack. This attack involves taking over a majority of the block producers within a shard to create a malicious shard that sends invalid transactions.
Ethereum sharding is a promising solution for the scalability challenges faced by the network. By dividing the network into smaller shards, Ethereum can process more transactions per second and improve overall efficiency without compromising its decentralized nature.
However, the implementation of sharding presents some challenges, such as cross-shard communication and shard security. Nevertheless, the Ethereum community is working hard to address these issues and make sharding a reality. Ethereum sharding could be a game-changer for the blockchain industry and provide a solid foundation for the future of decentralized applications and smart contracts – if implemented successfully.
As the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow and evolve, it will be exciting to see how sharding develops and how it contributes to the advancement of blockchain technology.
If you want to learn more about Ethereum and its progress, I recommend reading the following articles:
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