The importance of block size and the rise of off-chain solutions

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In recent years, as retail investors and listed companies enter the cryptocurrency field, the cryptocurrency industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.

Globally, estimates indicate that between 2018 and 2020, the number of encrypted users has surged by approximately 190%.

The record inflow has brought the number of active addresses and transaction volume on the Bitcoin network to record highs this year.

On the surface, all of this should be celebrated-indeed. But this is the problem: Although Bitcoin’s network demand has surged, it can be considered that the blockchain infrastructure has not kept up with the pace of development.

Bitcoin has a block size of 1MB, which means that the blockchain can only process about five transactions per second on average. It is estimated that within 24 hours, you are viewing about 86,400 transactions. Although the network has made great achievements, mathematically speaking, this makes it impossible for the blockchain to promote global payments in its current form.

All of this has led to a surge in BTC transaction fees- According to some estimates from last month, They successfully broke the $62 record set in December 2017. People blame the network’s hash rate for a sharp drop, which is related to the power outage in China’s Xinjiang mining center. The result is obvious because it means that blockchain has become too expensive for many of us to use…especially for smaller transactions.

Proposed solutions, the most notable of which is the Lightning Network. But as Cointelegraph reported, Slow to adopt In the three years since its launch, some users have chosen to endure expensive on-chain transactions due to the technical requirements associated with this L2 alternative product.

Back in February, research showed that 88% of Bitcoin transaction inputs were also Ended up paying unnecessary expenses Because they cannot use the SegWit format, this helps increase capacity. In the past, estimates indicate that full adoption of SegWit may result in a block size of up to 2MB.We are still a long way from achieving this goal-the latest data from TransactionFee.info Performance Only 70% of transactions use SegWit, so the block size is 1.3MB.

Attention shifted out of the chain

Of course, this is not just a problem unique to Bitcoin. In recent months, Ethereum has paid considerable attention to scalability, and the current bull market, the rise of DeFi protocols and the explosion of NFTs have exacerbated this situation.

All of this has led to a consistent push for second-tier solutions such as aggregation: smart contract networks can process and store transaction data far away from the main blockchain. Vitalik Buterin believes that the summary will act as a blanket, which will help the Ethereum network manage the current level of congestion, and the improvement proposals will also change the way the gas bill is calculated.

But some people worry that even the introduction of Eth2 May not be enough To ensure that the network is sustainable. As Sandeep Nailwal, chief operating officer of Matic Operations, told Cointelegraph: “Eth2 cannot provide the unlimited scalability of Ethereum. The best case is 64 shards with shards, which can be similar to today’s Ethereum chain. The chain can be improved using PoS and has 50 TPS. Even so, 64 shards can provide 3200 TPS. Once the supply of this TPS is launched, Dapps will start to utilize the chain aspect faster, and demand will grow faster. We will fall into the same situation again.”

What is the answer?

Some experts in the blockchain industry believe that the only solution to eliminate scalability concerns is to build a network that can handle a large number of transactions in offset transactions.

Il Korn It started as an alternative to Bitcoin, but has now developed into its own unique blockchain network. This project has the same foundation as Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Cash and Bitocin itself: SHA-256.

In March 2021, blockchain service provider TAAL claimed to have managed to process 638MB blocks on Bitcoin SV-far exceeding the current theoretical limit of 128MB. This is a huge improvement over the 1MB block size restricted by BTC, and a bit ahead of the 32MB block size of BCH.

Due to the use of the RIFT protocol, the ILCoin blockchain produced 5GB blocks in 2020, which allows the block size to increase without affecting the transaction speed. It can be verified with block number 310280 in ILCoin’s block explorer.

Overall, the project stated that it can achieve true decentralization, while the speed on the Visa network is 10 times faster.

As financial institutions including Visa and Mastercard pay more and more attention to the functions of blockchain technology, together with mainstream banks, ILCOIN stated that it provides an unparalleled infrastructure that is very suitable for next-generation payments.

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or products on this page. Although we aim to provide you with all the important information that may be obtained, readers should conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company and take full responsibility for their decisions. This article should not be regarded as investment advice.

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