Scaling the Blockchain

In the meantime, we have been working on some fundamental changes to help scale Steem.We currently run 7 steemd nodes in AWS to support steemit.com and will need to continue to run more and more to support our growth.The key problem is that Steemd is single threaded, however, we are well along in the process of making it multithreaded.

Imagine the steemd server program is a stove.Right now, it has a single burner and we need to make a meal.A few of the dishes are the peer to peer network, accepting and evaluating blocks, and responding to API requests for data clients like steemit.com.We are rapidly switching pots, pans, and skillets onto the single burner to make each component of the meal.The increased request volume from steemit.com is delaying the meal.

Thus far, we have been buying extra single burner stoves to distribute the load because this was how blockchains were originally designed.But this is not ideal because all of our stoves (our computers) actually have 8 burners (CPU cores) and we are only using 1 each.We have been making changes to the steemd server program so that we can use all 8 burners and not need as many stoves.That way we can put a skillet on one burner, a pot on another, pan on another, you get the idea.