Near Protocol: Blockchains Cannot Scale Without Sharding!
The initial scaling roadmap for Ethereum featured execution layer sharding. However, the rapid advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions in general, and zero knowledge proofs in particular, caused a restructuring of the original plan. The reason was that rollups would have required less changes made to Ethereum’s base layer, hence lower risks. On the other hand, Near Protocol was designed from the ground up as a sharded system, capable of withstanding billions of transactions simultaneously, without sacrificing decentralisation or security.
Topics:
- Illia’s & Alex’s backgrounds
- Sharding and blockchain scalability
- Challenges of building a sharded blockchain
- Near namespace
- Shard security & validator sampling
- Stateless validation and data availability
- State witnesses and chunk producers
- Block production
- Shards vs. Rollups
- How Near could further improve
- Leaderless chunk production
- Chain abstraction
Links:
Meher Roy