Blockchain phase 2: Will it scale?
Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:11:00 -0700
More than one organization has been working on solving a major blockchain conundrum: how to improve sluggish transaction performance.
Blockchain distributed ledgers work by linking together a chain of electronic records, each inextricably tied to the one before it; each new set of entries or “blocks” is completed and time-stamped with a hashtag only after passing through a consensus process on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.
Due to its chain nature, each new record inserted into a blockchain has to be serialized, which means – as the blockchain grows – the rate of updates is slower than traditional databases that can update data in parallel.
Today, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency ledgers – bitcoin and Ethereum – use a proof of work (PoW) consensus model that requires nodes (servers) to complete a complicated mathematical problem as a way of authenticating new blocks (similar to how CAPTCHA acts as a challenge/response mechanism for websites confirming human users).
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