Understanding the Scalability Debate in Blockchain

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In the cryptocurrencies space whenever we hear the issues of scalability is often a daisy one with many views and opinions. We know that the higher a blockchain grows then comes even more increase in the number of transaction it's processing normally when this transactions becomes too much for the blockchain they often tend to lack behind or become slow as the case maybe and this is probably due to the lack of scalability in the system leading to debates as to how this could be better solved completely.

Ofcourse there has been lots of debates as to how the issues of scalability could better be solved with many coming up with various alternative but one of thing persist which is despite this solutions offered there is exist a probably cons to it. Yes they do have it pros too. Many cryptocurrencies project has worked tirelessly in offering many options they feel could permanently solve blockchain scalability issue but then most times this possible solutions comes at a cost with the rest of reducing blockchain security or it's decentralized nature. Hence today I will break down some of the blockchain scalability debate.

What Are The Blockchain Scalability Debate

One of the debates as it concerns scalability is what we know as on-chain scaling many feel that increasing the size of the blockchain size will help for the blockchain to be able to handle more transactions per block. Now the suggestion of on-chain scaling is done with an aim in mind, that's to help to improve to great extent blockchain scalability which seems to be on the decline in some chains and indeed on-chain scaling will be able to help improve the transaction capacity of the blockchain, but the issues is with this comes a chance of we having a blockchain that's not decentralized because when some blocks are increase it will lead to them gaining more attention and possibly even more users participation too more than other blocks which no doubt will lead to centralization impacting the decentralization of the chain.

Another possibility also in solving scalability issues in the blockchain is one of the off-chain solutions that have been often debated. Well what's the issue with this and how does it help improve scalability in the blockchain. Well this works by adding solutions which are or won't be part of the main chain as it will help in processing transactions reducing the workload of the transaction throughput of the main chain with the goal of helping the main blockchain to ease up a little on the congestions in events of high transactions which all needs immediate attention.

This off-chain scaling solutions will help in ensuring that transactions on the blockchain are handled much faster with lightening speed. Ofcourse it all looks bright except for this introduction of this off-chain will create doubt in the mind of users as they won't be able to trust it as the main chain and also the idea that comes with this brings a lot of difficulties to the user-friendliness of the blockchain.

Also we have the argument or idea that if only the blockchain could be splitted into shards that's dividing it up into smaller parts that it will help increase the transaction speed of the blockchain. As the believe is that with the blockchain divided up in shards it means they will be able to handle transactions in a parallel manner which ofcourse we enable it handle more transactions in as little time as possible this idea actually would help a great deal in improving the scalability of a blockchain network but the challenge here is to even implement this is a serious problem and possible for now only on paper and in theory and comes with a lot of complexity not to talk of the possible security issues that might come with it.

Some argue then that since there is a challenge with on-chain scaling solutions and off-chain scaling solutions even with sharding whynot we do something a bit different, whynot change the blockchain consensus mechanism in it's entirety, the believe or goal still to improve the scalability of the chain for instance, a proof of work consensus mechanism could be changed to a proof of stake consensus mechanism all in a bid to improve the scalability of the blockchain but with this even there comes security challenges as well as the proof of work is an algorithm that's robust and whilst switching to proof of stake that same level of security may not be guaranteed not to talk of how hard such a transition would be and also a possibility that in the bid to gain high transaction speed the blockchain may lose its decentralized nature in an attempt to make such a transition.

Conclusion

Well in a way it seems very hard not to seek improved scalability without running a risk of sacrificing either security or decentralization or even both, and with some of this solutions offered there is a risk of either or even both happening. I mean it would really be great for them developers to come together to work on the best way to accomplish this without sacrificing the security of the chain whilst also maintaining the decentralized nature of the blockchain that would be a sight to behold indeed.