New Public Chain Shardeum: Another Possibility of Sharding

The scalability of blockchain has always been one of the key factors limiting its large-scale application. To address this issue, Sharding technology was developed. Sharding improves overall transaction processing capacity by dividing the nodes in the network into smaller groups, processing different sets of transactions, and achieving parallel processing.

However, the implementation of Sharding technology is not an easy task. The main challenges include:

1. How to perform network Sharding, that is, to determine which Shard the nodes/validators of the entire network belong to;

2. How to perform transaction sharding, that is, to determine which shard each transaction is allocated to for processing;

3. How to implement state Sharding, that is, how blockchain data is stored across different shards;

4. How to ensure that the overall system's security is not compromised.

Currently, there are several projects in the industry exploring Sharding technology, such as Zilliqa, Harmony, Elrond, Near, etc. These projects have proposed their own solutions, but there are still some common issues:

1. How to avoid continuous execution of shards during cross-sharding transactions while ensuring atomicity of transactions;

2. When the number of new nodes in the network is insufficient to form a complete Sharding, how to handle these surplus nodes.

In response to these issues, the new public chain project Shardeum has proposed two innovative solutions:

1. Transaction-level Consensus

Shardeum adopts a transaction-level rather than a block-level consensus mechanism. Each transaction is processed and agreed upon in the order it is received before being packaged into blocks/Sharding. This allows cross-sharding transactions to be processed simultaneously, rather than requiring sequential processing like other projects. Transaction-level consensus eliminates the complexity needed to ensure atomic processing, enabling second-level confirmations and low latency.

2. Dynamic State Sharding

Shardeum adopts dynamic state Sharding, where each node can hold different and overlapping address ranges. This increases complexity, but enables true linear scalability. Through dynamic changes in the correspondence between address space and nodes, along with a new data availability proof mechanism, Shardeum can achieve near-linear scalability.

Currently, Shardeum has demonstrated its technical capabilities on the testnet. In August 2022, on the testnet Liberty 2.0 with full sharding functionality, it successfully showcased a processing capacity of 100 TPS through ERC20 token transfers. Compared to other projects that take years to reach this level of TPS, Shardeum achieved this goal in less than 4 months after launching the testnet.

Although Shardeum is still in the development stage, its innovative technical solutions bring new possibilities to the blockchain sharding field. If successfully implemented, it is expected to significantly enhance the scalability of blockchain and pave the way for large-scale applications of blockchain.

Of course, the path of technological innovation is never smooth. Whether Shardeum's solution can withstand the test of large-scale practical applications remains to be further verified. However, any exploration and attempt on the key issue of blockchain scalability deserves the industry's attention and support. As the ancient saying goes, "It is better to take action than to sit and talk about it." Only through continuous practice and exploration can blockchain technology truly achieve breakthroughs and usher in a new era of large-scale applications.