MultiversX: Blockchain Sharding 101

MultiversX: Blockchain Sharding 101

In 2017, Vitalik Buterin defined the ‘Scalability Trilemma’ which consisted of 3 attributes that every blockchain had to balance depending on its intended use cases: decentralisation, scalability and security. While Ethereum sacrificed scalability in favour of security and decentralisation, others prioritised throughput over the other two. However, a solution was proposed, inspired from Web2 computer science - sharding. Despite the fact that Ethereum’s ossification and significant progress in zero knowledge research led to a shift in Ethereum’s roadmap away from execution sharding towards L2 rollups, there were other L1s that were designed from the get-go as sharded blockchains. One such example was Elrond, who implemented the beacon chain PoS consensus alongside a sharded execution layer. Their recent rebranding to MultiversX alludes to a multi-chain, interoperable ecosystem, in which sovereign chains can communicate in a similar manner to cross-shard transaction routing.

Topics:

  • Lucian’s background and founding Elrond (MultiversX)
  • Elrond’s validator & shard architecture
  • Cross-shard composability
  • VMs, smart contracts and transaction routing
  • Self sovereignty and modularity
  • MultiversX vision
  • Roadmap

Links:

Host:Felix Lutsch