NEAR Achieves Blockchain Sharding, Solving the Blockchain Trilemma

• NEAR’s sharding implementation enables true blockchain scalability without sacrificing decentralization, setting a new standard.
• Unlike Ethereum, NEAR’s innovative approach combines shards efficiently, eliminating bottlenecks and enhancing performance.
• With perfect interoperability, NEAR’s sharding solves composability issues, pushing the boundaries of what blockchain can achieve.

NEAR Protocol has implemented sharding, marking a milestone in blockchain technology. This breakthrough solves the blockchain trilemma by offering scalability without compromising decentralization.

1/9) NEAR has finally implemented sharding!

The holy grail of blockchain scaling, solving the blockchain trilemma once & for all

Stateless validation was the last missing piece of the puzzle

Giving us massive capacity without sacrificing decentralization, the future is now! 🧵

— Justin Bons (@Justin_Bons) September 23, 2024

Horizontal Scaling: A Game Changer

The August 12th NEAR 2.0 update completed the project, making NEAR the second chain to achieve sharding in production, following in the footsteps of Elrond (EGLD). Stateless validation, the final piece of the puzzle, has enabled this massive scaling, creating a paradigm shift in the industry.

Horizontal scaling, NEAR’s new approach, distributes workloads across node groupings, or “shards,” allowing for linear growth. This contrasts with the traditional method of every node verifying all states, which is fundamentally unscalable. Ethereum (ETH), despite years of research, gave up on sharding in 2022, opting for Layer 2 (L2) scaling instead.

However, NEAR’s success casts a shadow over ETH’s compromises, as sharding proves to be a superior solution. The innovative architecture NEAR introduces not only surpasses Ethereum but also demonstrates the power of blockchain to evolve.

Moreover, NEAR’s sharding is novel. Instead of relying on a beacon or meta chain to coordinate shards, it combines chunks from different shards into a single block. This design eliminates bottlenecks, even at 1 million transactions per second (TPS), positioning NEAR as a leader in blockchain scalability.

Interoperability and Efficiency: The Future of NEAR

Stateless validation allows faster shuffling of nodes between shards, ensuring each shard benefits from full Layer 1 (L1) security. This leads to a reduction in state growth, as the network’s data is efficiently divided among the shards.

Significantly, NEAR offers perfect interoperability between shards, integrating them into a coherent whole. This ensures seamless operations without fragmentation or composability issues. In contrast, L2 scaling introduces limitations. Besides, with NEAR’s sharding, the only trade-off is a slight speed difference when compared to purely parallelized chains. However, this difference is marginal, measured in mere seconds.

Consequently, NEAR’s sharding breakthrough deserves more attention. The technology’s potential to transform the blockchain landscape should not be underestimated. As the crypto evolves, NEAR’s achievement may drive the industry toward a fully scalable, decentralized future.

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