What is Sharding? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 196 - by cryptohunt.it

What is Sharding?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about “sharding”, which is one way that blockchains are looking to solve scalability issues.

High scalability allows a blockchain to efficiently process transactions, even when its number of users increases.

Sharding is one way to do this. Instead of relying on a single blockchain to process all transactions at once, transactions are divided among several chains, or “shards”, that process smaller batches of transactions at the same time.

Think about sharding like checkout lines at a grocery store. If there was only one cashier and hundreds of customers, many of those customers would have to wait forever and get frustrated.

Sharding allows blockchains to have multiple cashiers, or chains, available to process those transactions. Each register is also connected to a central system that coordinates and records the transactions from the individual cashiers.

In practice, a user’s transaction will be processed automatically on the least busy shard while still getting the benefits of using that blockchain through the central system. Think of it like standing in the shortest line.

The best thing: To the user, this all happens transparently. All they notice is that things are transacting very fast.

This is exciting news for blockchains like Ethereum, which will soon transition to a sharding system run by “The Beacon Chain”. The Beacon Chain will coordinate and combine the transactions between Ethereum’s shard chains when they are hopefully released sometime in 2023.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.