Near Protocol: 'Blockchains Cannot Scale Without Sharding!' - Illia Polosukhin & Alex Skidanov
May 4, 2024
auto_awesome
Blockchain experts Illia Polosukhin and Alex Skidanov discuss sharding technology and scalability in Near Protocol. Topics include challenges of building a sharded blockchain, stateless validation, shard security, and comparing shards vs. rollups. The podcast explores how Near Protocol improves leaderless chunk production and chain abstraction for efficiency in blockchain networks.
Sharding optimizes blockchain scalability by distributing data across nodes effectively.
Validators play a crucial role in ensuring data availability and trust in sharded networks.
Validators switch between shards to validate transactions and promote network security.
Chunk producers create blocks with state witnesses, while validators verify transactions for security.
Deep dives
State Management Complexity and Scaling Challenges
The podcast episode delves into the complexities of managing state in blockchain networks, particularly for a large user base. With the focus on sharding as a solution, the episode highlights the challenges of processing vast amounts of state and transactions. It emphasizes the necessity to scale processing power and storage across multiple nodes. The discussion underscores the importance of designing systems that can handle user demand beyond hardware limitations.
Data Availability and Consensus Mechanisms
The episode explores the integration of data availability and consensus within a single mechanic in sharded blockchains. It describes the role of validators in validating blocks across different shards using erasure coding for data replication. The concept of state witnesses for transactions and the rotation of validators ensure verifiability and trust in the network. Validators switch between shards constantly, validating transactions and adding signatures to blocks, promoting trust and security.
Validator Roles and Dynamic Switching
The discussion highlights the dual roles of chunk producers and validators in sharded blockchains. Chunk producers are responsible for creating blocks with state witnesses while validators verify transactions and add signatures to ensure block validity. Validators dynamically switch between shards, constantly validating transactions and blocks. The episode emphasizes the importance of sampling validators to mitigate the risk of malicious behavior, ensuring consistency and security across the network.
Secure Transaction Processing and Signature Verification
The episode explains the secure processing of transactions in sharded blockchains through signature verification by validators. Every block requires validators to verify and sign off on transactions and state witnesses. Through constant sampling and switching of validators, the network maintains a high level of security and trust. The episode underscores the role of validators in ensuring data availability, consensus, and transaction integrity across the sharded network.
Shard to Shard Communication Process and Consensus Guarantees
When shards in the blockchain communicate, a process ensures that required data parts are exchanged, leading to message delivery, data availability, and integrated consensus messages. Validators accumulate BRC consensus by confirming the data chunks received, and this mechanism ensures safety over liveness in case of missing chunks.
Chunk Production and Data Availability in Sharding
In the blockchain's sharded structure, blocks do not contain actual transactions but erasure-coded information about chunks produced by chunk producers. Block producers only sign off on blocks if they have the chunk parts intended for them, aligning consensus and data availability. With a DFT consensus, two-thirds of block producers must sign off, ensuring that chunks are available and reconstructible by the network.
Near's Approach to Sharding and Chain Abstraction
Near's synchronous design allows for seamless interaction among shards, eliminating the need for complex economic relationships between layers. Near's account model's scalability aligns with future needs, while Ethereum's L2 systems face challenges in asset migration and fee structures. Near's chain abstraction concept simplifies interactions, enabling efficient asset handling across different chains.
The initial scaling roadmap for Ethereum featured execution layer sharding. However, the rapid advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions in general, and zero knowledge proofs in particular, caused a restructuring of the original plan. The reason was that rollups would have required less changes made to Ethereum’s base layer, hence lower risks. On the other hand, Near Protocol was designed from the ground up as a sharded system, capable of withstanding billions of transactions simultaneously, without sacrificing decentralisation or security.
Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one
This episode is hosted by Meher Roy.
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.
