- “Shards” word denotes the process that divides the whole network into several smaller networks.
- One of its main features is that one shard is unique and independent of other shards.
- Improve version of Blockchain Scalability to execute fastest transactions per second.
Blockchain technology was first coined in 2008, and technology was introduced for bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first successful digital currency. The use of blockchain was first limited to digital currency but now the technology has evolved into many industries. The number of users has also increased. The load on the network computers of data has also increased.
Blockchain sharding is an answer to problems like slow transactions and scalability problems.
What is Blockchain Sharding?
Sharding or data partitioning is a technique for distributing large data into smaller sources and making the transaction faster. Similarly in blockchain sharding, the network divides the blockchain structure into smaller networks over peer-to-peer networks. The nodes will still be sharing the data information but they won’t be processing the data.
Many people are using blockchain technology which causes a scalability problem, it needs all the nodes to process all the data which is time-consuming and slows the system.
It is tested and it works on L1 (L1, layer 1 is a base network).
There are two types of sharding
- Horizontal – the data will be divided into multiple tables with the same number of columns but fewer rows
- Vertical – the data will be moved to new tables with the same number of rows but fewer columns.
Advantages-
- Increase in its scalability.
- Increase in transaction time.
- Reducing the gas fee in L2.
- If the data is affected. In shards the only sharded data will be corrupt, not all of the data.
- Improves the latency period of the blockchain network by dividing it into separate shards.
Disadvantages-
- Adds complexity to the technology.
- Expensive to join data in multiple shards.
- When shards outgrow another shard it will slow down the performance of the technology then the data has to rebalance.
The huge amounts of transaction data being shared daily and multiple users bring the load on the system which makes the transactions slow. Blockchain technology is an evolving platform in various fields. Sharding technology improves the latency period by splitting the blockchain network into separate shards.
The problem in Ethereum about scalability will be solved by the sharding. Reduce in gas and increase in transaction time.
Sharding Security
One question constantly arises for security purposes, creating a concern with the procedure. The shards are completely independent and won’t be processing the data from other nodes.But there is a possibility that one shard will be taking over another and some malicious shards will enter and corrupt the data in the network.
It is expensive to join the data and it increases the complexity of the technology. To mitigate such attacks, Ethereum’s research on random allocating nodes to shards makes it difficult for hackers to determine corrupt shard in the network.
The mobilization of sharding in real-world applications creates a persuasive argument for the expansion of sharding-related initiatives in the coming years.