Sharding tech makes 100x scalability and seamless interoperability a reality

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Amazon sold 375 million products on the first Prime Day of 2023. On one of the busiest days of the year, only one store provides the highest level of convenience to its users; This is a testament to decades of infrastructure development on web2.

Contrast this with the never-ending possibilities of a unified web3 ecosystem, which, although widely talked about, is increasingly difficult to achieve, characterized by fragmented systems, long processing times and prohibitive costs.

Proponents of web3 have long been trying to step up efforts to mirror web2’s seamless experience and benchmarks. The biggest obstacle to this dream is the provision of scalable networks that maintain decentralization with growth.

Enter shredding technology. It has been widely talked about and tested around the world, and now it has finally become a reality. From what the dev community has seen so far, it may be the messiah the web3 community has been waiting for. And rightly so!

Shredding technology in action

Let’s face it. The current web3 model is relatively slow, inefficient and costly. It is difficult to convince the majority of the world’s internet users, let alone companies or even the developer community, to make a quick switch from the simplicity and convenience of web2.

The newfound emergence of Sharding technology now makes it more than an urban legend. Although the giants of the industry have talked a lot about this technology, the recent launch of Sovereign Chains is the first application of its kind to feature this groundbreaking technology. A solution that is bound to advance the use cases of the best L1s and hundreds of L2s seeking scalability and interoperability solutions.

At its core, sharding involves breaking the network into smaller, more manageable pieces, maintaining security, speed, negligible costs, and energy efficiency even during times of exponential activity. Theoretically sound, its practical implementation in Sovereign Chains now proves it can solve web3’s most pressing challenges in an economical, developer-friendly and highly resource-efficient manner. This means building a blockchain that can scale 100x compared to Ethereum or Bitcoin, with very little time and energy spent.

One of the biggest sectors that will benefit from sharding technology is decentralized finance. It’s no secret that to compete effectively with the current financial system, web3 must deliver solutions that are ten times superior in every measurable aspect. By deploying sharding technology, it is possible to ensure that end users not only achieve parity with the legacy system but also benefit from improvements such as globally equitable access, open playing fields, transparency, value creation, privacy and security.

The technology is designed to allow premium defi platforms to no longer be bound by blockchain-specific limitations, enabling interoperability with other defi products on any major chain, eliminating liquidity fragmentation and unlocking significant capital efficiency improvements.

Beyond Defi, applications of Sovereign Chains powered by sharding technology extend to gaming, healthcare, supply chain, education, government and enterprise sectors. In the gaming industry, for example, high throughput and low latency combined with adjustable transaction fees enable completely different business models and gaming styles. Developers can deliver seamless user experiences regardless of scale by introducing innovative in-game reward structures, new economies, auctions, time-sensitive airdrops, and more.

Understandably, all of this is leading to the foundation of the first interconnected web3 ecosystem, which inherits capabilities like on-chain 2FA, native standards, user-friendly aliases, and more to overcome critical challenges holding back widespread adoption of web3.

Encouraging adoption from scratch

To benefit from any major breakthrough in the Web3 world, the first step is to gain the trust of the developer community. It’s almost the exact opposite of how consumer products in the traditional world target end consumers. But what is common is the aim of simplifying people’s lives by acting on the needs of early adopters.

Composability of digital assets and unbreakable security are other key benefits that come with the scalable architecture of sharding technology, allowing developers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure.

Sharding technology provides a solid and scalable foundation for building next-generation dApps and interoperability of L2s with major crypto chains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. It is something much needed for developers to leverage the strengths of multiple ecosystems to create more versatile and powerful products for last-mile user consumption.

Combining various chains into an ecosystem goes beyond the traditional bridging of assets. Advanced smart contract capabilities, custom VM environments, and comprehensive SDKs enable developers to more efficiently build, test, and launch natively running solutions across multiple chains. This holistic approach lowers barriers to entry by inviting more talent, including the existing web2 developer community, to explore blockchain technology without the limitations of past iterations.

Advancing the status of the Sovereign Chains

In a world where security and data concerns are rapidly increasing, the need for scalable web3 infrastructure comes to the fore, and you can expect to see networking features such as parallel processing, hidden transactions, or VM-specific optimizations that can extend native functionality.

Achieving the seamless and far-reaching reach of existing web2 technology while encouraging collaboration between chains is an ambitious but achievable goal. Thanks to sharding technology and the introduction of Sovereign Chains, it is now possible not only to imagine, but also to build a scalable, secure and cost-effective architecture that can support the creativity of current and future web3 developers.

Lucian Mincu

Lucian Mincu is a visionary infrastructure engineer, co-founder and chief information officer of MultiversX. He has extensive experience developing end-to-end startup solutions and designing and implementing highly complex infrastructure and network architectures. Lucian’s ability to solve complex technical challenges has helped MultiversX become a Top 100 L1 project operating at a maximum of 263,000 transactions per second with a growing ecosystem of 8,200+ dApps and 3,200 nodes. Prior to co-founding MultiversX, Lucian’s entrepreneurial and technical expertise was put to practice through the co-founding and development of ICO Market Data, a platform for discovering ICO opportunities, filtering scams, and supporting blockchain projects.