Venom is a Layer 0 proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain solution built to meet the demands of real-world applications. Its unique architecture and technology provide high levels of scalability and security, making it ideal for decentralized applications. It is suitable for decentralized applications thanks to its unique architecture and technology, which offer high levels of security and scalability.

Scalability is critical to blockchain and crypto’s future because it addresses one of these technologies’ most significant challenges — handling a large volume of transactions.

In simple terms, scalability refers to a blockchain’s ability to handle increasing users and transactions without compromising performance or efficiency. As blockchain and crypto become more popular and adoption rates continue to rise, the number of transactions and users will increase, putting pressure on networks to process more transactions quickly and securely.

Blockchain and crypto projects aim to achieve mass adoption. However, projects must be able to handle the increasing number of transactions and users while maintaining high speeds, low fees, and strong security. 

The absence of scalability could lead to slow transaction times, high fees, and potential security vulnerabilities, ultimately hindering adoption and limiting the potential of these technologies. In addition, scalability can improve interoperability between different blockchain networks, making it easier for users to interact with multiple platforms.

To address this issue, several blockchain projects are developing solutions to improve scalability, such as sidechains, Layer 2 scaling solutions, and sharding. These solutions aim to increase the network’s capacity to handle more transactions while maintaining its decentralized and secure nature.

Venom achieves network scalability through its Dynamic Sharding protocol, which divides the network into smaller, more manageable chunks called shards. By allowing communities to create infinite workchains, Venom’s transactional scalability becomes limitless, thereby delivering future-proofing.

In this article, we delve deeper into sharding, dynamic sharding, and how Venom’s sharding approach boosts scalability in the ecosystem.

What is Sharding?

Sharding is simply a partitioning technique used to distribute a peer-to-peer (P2P) network’s computational and storage workload across nodes so that one node isn’t required to handle the transactional load for the entire network. Let’s further break down and explore sharding!

Sharding Definition

By definition: Sharding is a technique used in blockchain technology to improve scalability and increase transaction throughput. Sharding in blockchain is similar to sharding in database management systems. 

In a blockchain network, every node stores a copy of the entire blockchain. This can become cumbersome and slow as the size of the network and the number of transactions increase. Sharding involves partitioning the blockchain network into smaller groups of nodes, called shards, each responsible for processing a subset of transactions.

A shard is a subset of the overall network responsible for processing a fraction of the transactions. Each shard operates independently and validates only the transactions within its shard, reducing the amount of redundant work required by the network.

By dividing the network in this way, sharding can significantly increase the throughput and capacity of the network. This allows the network to process more transactions per second than a non-sharded network. Different projects have different approaches to implementing sharding. However, the goal is always to create a more scalable, efficient, decentralized blockchain network.

While several types of sharding exist in blockchain technology, we will focus on dynamic sharding, particularly Venom’s sharding approach.

What is Dynamic Sharding?

Dynamic sharding is a technique used in blockchain technology to improve the scalability of the network. We already stated above that sharding is a way to divide an entire blockchain network into smaller, more manageable partitions, each with its subset of nodes responsible for verifying transactions and maintaining the ledger.

However, dynamic sharding takes this concept a step further by allowing the network to adjust the number and size of shards in real-time based on changes in the network’s traffic and usage. This is in contrast to static sharding methods, where the number and size of shards are pre-determined and fixed.

In dynamic sharding, the network automatically determines how many shards are needed based on the current activity level and divides the network into those shards accordingly. This allows the network to handle more transactions and improves overall scalability. The allocation process is governed by a set of rules or algorithms which consider factors such as transaction volume, computational resources, and network latency.

One of the critical advantages of dynamic sharding is its ability to scale the network as the number of transactions and nodes on the network grows. As the network expands, additional shards can be added, each of which can process a larger number of transactions. This allows the network to accommodate more users and increases the throughput of the network.

Dynamic sharding also reduces the cost of executing transactions by reducing the computational overhead required to validate transactions. By distributing the workload across multiple shards, the network can process transactions more efficiently and at a lower cost.

Dynamic sharding is still a relatively new concept and is being explored by various blockchain projects to address blockchain technology’s scalability challenges. As a result, it also introduces some challenges and trade-offs. 

One of the main challenges is maintaining the integrity and consistency of the blockchain ledger across all shards. Each shard must communicate and coordinate with the other shards to ensure the ledger remains consistent while preventing double-spending attacks.

Another challenge is ensuring that the allocation of transactions to shards is fair and unbiased. The allocation process must be transparent and verifiable to prevent any single shard from gaining an unfair advantage.

How Dynamic Sharding Works

The process of dynamic sharding involves several steps:

The network starts with a fixed number of shards, each of which can process a limited number of transactions. The network is continuously monitored to determine its usage patterns and identify areas that require optimization.

As the transaction volume increases, the network dynamically creates new shards to handle the additional transactions. Nodes in the network are responsible for determining the optimal number of shards and adjusting the shard size based on the current transaction volume.

When a new shard is created, some nodes are assigned to validate the transactions in that shard. Nodes can move between shards dynamically, allowing the network to adjust the distribution of computing resources as needed.

If the transaction volume decreases, the network can merge shards to reduce the number of active shards and free up computing resources.

Venom’s Sharding Approach

As mentioned earlier, the Venom network uses Dynamic Sharding to achieve scalability by dividing the network into smaller, more manageable sections called shardchains. Shardchains are like processor cores that execute computations with their private memory space, responsible for a defined range of contract addresses and executing transactions only for these smart contracts.

The network starts with one shardchain covering all smart contract addresses of the network, with validators from the global validators set producing blocks for this shardchain. When the transaction load exceeds 90% capacity for 100 seconds, validators create a block with a “want split” flag, which tells the global set of validators to select a subset of validators responsible for executing transactions for a specific range of addresses belonging to the shardchain.

The subset of validators responsible for the new shardchain rotates and is known in advance so that every validator knows which shards it will need to validate. During this “want split,” a shardchain always divides into two shardchains, each getting a binary prefix in its address.

When the transaction load decreases below 60% capacity for 100 seconds, validators produce a block with a “want merge” flag, which tells the subset of validators to begin validating for the merged shardchain. They commit a “merge commit” flag in the headers of blocks of their shardchain and stop creating new blocks in separate shardchains.

The Masterchain, Venom’s Layer 0 blockchain, coordinates all protocol entities, such as workchains and shardchains, storing network configurations and validator information. The global validator set secures the masterchain.

Dynamic Sharding allows Venom to scale linearly by increasing the number of shardchains to handle increasing transaction loads, making it possible to handle more transactions, users, and applications on the network.

Benefits of Venom’s Sharding Approach

There are several benefits to using dynamic sharding in blockchain technology, such as:

• Increased scalability: By breaking up the transactions into smaller shards, dynamic sharding allows for greater scalability, as each shard can process data independently. This can improve the speed and efficiency of transactions, making Venom more suitable for use in applications with high transaction volumes. In this article you’ll find more context about Venom’s scalability solution.
• Improved performance: Dynamic sharding allows Venom to scale linearly, enforcing parallel processing across multiple shardchains. As a result, Venom can guarantee improved transaction throughput, faster block confirmation times, and reduced latency without sacrificing performance or security.
• Increased security: Venom’s sharding approach can also help improve the blockchain network’s security, as each shard can be assigned to a different node or group of nodes. This helps prevent a single point of failure, making the blockchain more resistant to attacks.
• Better resource utilization: Venom’s dynamic sharding approach can help improve resource utilization on the blockchain network. Processing transactions across multiple shardchains can help reduce the processing power and storage needed to run the blockchain, making it more cost-effective.

Applications of Sharding Beyond Venom

Sharding technology is gaining widespread adoption in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry due to its potential to improve scalability and performance. As a result, many blockchain platforms beyond Venom are exploring sharding to address the scaling challenges that limit blockchain adoption. Here are some examples of other blockchain and cryptocurrency platforms that are using or exploring sharding technology:

Ethereum: Ethereum is one of the most well-known blockchain platforms exploring sharding as a scaling solution. Recently transitioned from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to a proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm, Ethereum 2.0, the Ethereum network’s upgrade, will implement sharding to increase transaction throughput, making the platform faster and more efficient.

Polkadot: Polkadot is an interoperable multi-chain platform that allows different blockchain networks to connect and interact. The platform uses a sharding approach called “parachains” to improve its scalability and can process up to 1 million transactions per second across all connected networks.

Zilliqa: Zilliqa is a high-throughput blockchain platform already implementing sharding technology. The platform can process up to 2,800 transactions per second and can scale linearly with the addition of new nodes. Zilliqa’s sharding technology uses a hybrid consensus mechanism that combines PoW and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT).

Harmony: Harmony is a blockchain platform that uses sharding technology to improve scalability. The platform uses a unique sharding algorithm called “Effective Proof-of-Stake” (EPoS), which enables the network to reach consensus quickly while preventing attacks from malicious actors.

Cosmos: Cosmos is a decentralized network of independent blockchains that can interact with each other through the use of a shared consensus mechanism. The platform uses sharding technology to enable parallel processing of transactions across different blockchains, making the entire network faster and more efficient.

Elrond: Elrond uses a sharding approach called “Adaptive State Sharding” to achieve high transaction throughput and low latency. This approach dynamically adjusts the number of shards based on the current network load to ensure optimal performance.

Avalanche: Avalanche deploys a unique consensus algorithm called “Avalanche-X.” The platform’s sharding technology allows multiple subnets to run in parallel, enabling high throughput and low latency.

Potential Future Developments of Sharding in the Broader Technology Space

Sharding has been primarily used in the context of databases and is currently used in blockchain technology, but it has the potential to be applied in a broader technology space. Below are some potential future developments and applications of sharding.

Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT is expected to generate massive amounts of data that must be processed and analyzed. Sharding can partition IoT data into smaller, more manageable subsets, making it easier to process and analyze the data in real-time.

Artificial intelligence (AI): AI applications generate large amounts of data that need to be processed and analyzed. Sharding can be used to partition AI data into smaller subsets, making it easier to process and analyze the data in real-time. This can improve the performance of AI applications and enable new use cases such as real-time natural language processing.

Cloud computing: Sharding can improve the scalability and reliability of cloud-based applications. It can also reduce the risk of data loss or downtime in cloud-based applications by partitioning data and processing tasks across multiple servers.

Gaming: Sharding can be used in online gaming to improve performance and reduce latency. Sharding can enable more immersive, more complex gaming ecosystems and reduce the risk of downtime or game crashes by partitioning the game data.

Conclusion

Venom’s sharding approach offers an innovative solution to enhance the scalability of blockchain systems. By dividing the network into smaller shards, each of which can process transactions in parallel, Venom blockchain can achieve higher transaction throughput and lower latency. 

Furthermore, Venom’s dynamic sharding enables the network to adjust shard sizes according to demand, optimizing resource utilization and reducing the risk of network congestion. With these benefits, Venom blockchain’s sharding technology represents a promising approach to scaling blockchain applications and unlocking their potential for mainstream adoption.