When Ethereum was officially launched in 2015, it was seen as a decentralised, open source and public platform which would allow for on-blockchain computing and data processing. With such a project which touted its blockchain as a ‘world computer’ quickly gained some attention from all over the crypto industry in a way to quickly rise to prominence the native digital asset of the Ethereum ecosystem, quickly bounded past the majority of altcoins to solidify itself in the markets top ten.
However, as the network grew, it saw a wave of active users and daily transactions and it soon became clear that Ethereum’s Proof of Work consensus mechanism probably wouldn’t survive in the long haul.
This is an issue which was predicted by the projects most dedicated contributors leading many crypto enthusiastic developers and researchers to put in hundreds of hours working to solve the network’s most persistent worry, which is scalability.
According to the Ethereum World News, when talking at the recent Devcon4, which is one of the key events for Ethereum this year, the showrunner for CNBC Africa’s Crypto Trader segment, Ran NeuNer sat down with Justin Drake regarding scalability concerns.
Ethereum 2.0 is most likely a buzzword that, as a crypto trader, you will most likely have heard it thrown about. But what is it and what does it mean?
Drake, the researcher for Ethereum Network and its protocols said:
“Contains various new radical ideas. Part of it is around a move from Proof of Stake (POS) away from POW. And the other big idea is sharding, so scalability — having a thousand shards compared to just one shard.”
For those who don’t know, sharding is a technical term used to describe splitting up digital data sets into ‘shards’. If we look at the decentralised network, developers say that sharding could be useful for making consensus mechanisms more efficient allowing for an increase in data throughput and higher transactions.
Sharding could very well be a game changer but many have criticised the project's developers and community for not being quick enough. Drake mentioned this and claimed that there have been mistakes in the past as well as promising things that never came to fruition and excuses for delays being related to and the underestimation of how complex things would turn out to be.
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