How exactly does Ethereum plan to bridge the gap from 174 TPS to the 100,000 target? (Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash)
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Key Takeaways
Vitalik Buterin has a 100,000 TPS goal for Ethereum.
Ethereum plans to introduce sharding via PeerDAS.
Ethereum co-founder set a roadmap to implement sharding and roll-ups to scale the blockchain.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterinhas set his sights on an ambitious new goal: supercharging the platform’s scalability to a staggering 100,000 transactions per second (TPS).
Ethereum’s Future Unfolds: A Surge in Scalability
In a recent blog post, Buterin reflected on the network’s early days, when two main strategies emerged to address scalability: Sharding and Layer 2 blockchains.
The Ethereum co-founder credited these dual approaches with significantly boosting the network’s capacity and speed, a crucial step in the network’s evolution.
The fruits of research into these strategies, Buterin noted, ultimately yielded a breakthrough in solving the long-standing problem of verifying “data availability” at scale.
Yet, despite this progress, the persistent challenge of throughput remained an elusive puzzle piece awaiting a solution.
However, as Sharding and Layer 2 solutions continued to converge, the introduction of roll-ups, its newest iteration, has brought Ethereum tantalizingly close to cracking the notorious Blockchain Trilemma, a holy grail for the cryptocurrency community.
From 174 TPS to 100,000 TPS
Ethereum can currently handle 174 TPS.
Each block on the Ethereum blockchain holds up to six “blobs” of data, each around 125 kB in size.
This setup enables Ethereum to process around 174 TPS, calculated based on the blob data and the size of a typical ERC20 transfer (around 180 bytes).
So, how exactly does Ethereum plan to bridge the gap from 174 TPS to the 100,000 target?
The answer, according to Buterin, lies in PeerDAS, an upcoming update designed to tackle this problem head-on.
By allowing nodes to sample data from their peers, PeerDAS looks to increase the blob count target to 16, while swelling data per slot to a whopping 16 MB. This, in turn, could yield a significant leap to 58,000 transactions per second.
The Ethereum co-founder noted that the next essential step towards scalability is implementing and rolling out PeerDAS. However, the path ahead will not be without its challenges
A Major Leap
The implementation of PeerDAS involves two pivotal stages: 1D DAS and 2D DAS.
1D PeerDAS. Source: Vitalik Buterin.
The former involves random sampling of data in a linear format, while the latter adopts a more complex, two-dimensional approach, sampling within and between blobs.
Buterin acknowledged that the journey to 100,000 transactions per second will be a long and arduous one.
The immediate priority lies in completing the rollout of PeerDAS, followed by a careful, watchful eye on the network as it adapts to these changes.
The ultimate prize, however, lies in the development of a truly scalable, efficient, and secure blockchain ecosystem.
Prashant Jha is a seasoned crypto journalist based in Delhi, India, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering. Passionate about the evolving world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, he has been a dedicated voice in the industry since 2018. Prashant’s expertise lies in regulatory reporting, where he unravels complex legal and financial developments with clarity and precision. Before joining CCN in 2024, he honed his craft at Cointelegraph, establishing himself as a trusted name in crypto journalism.
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