Shard (NOUN) a small piece of an entity
What is Sharding?
Sharding is a process that refers to breaking up an entity into many parts. Many database management organizations employ this process.
In database management organizations, Sharding helps to distribute the information on RAMs, processors, and servers. Database management organizations employ this technique to organize, sort and work with big chunks of data quickly and efficiently.
Sharding is also known as Horizontal Partitioning; in essence, the databases get distributed amongst multiple nodes without forming a separate database for the information contained within.
Sharding in Blockchain
Blockchain technology has been the hype around for ten years now. And when you think about it, Blocks in the blockchain are nothing short of a virtual, decentralized ledger that stores transactions of cryptocurrencies.
Blockchains store data similar to databases. Popular blockchains such as Fantom, Algorand, or Cardano are preferred over the older blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin for the transaction speed.
Here is where the scalability aspect of a blockchain comes in. It is time to advance into the new generation of blockchain. Something that’s not just easy to use but is more sustainable and decentralized.
While Bitcoin can carry around 7-15 transactions per second, Ether’s platform – Ethereum, can carry about 17 – 30 transactions per second. But that’s still slow compared to prominent transaction platforms such as VisaNet, which does 1500+ transactions in a second!
So, Ethereum plans on increasing scalability in its evolved 2.0 version. It aims to do so by the same process – Sharding.
Sharding in Ethereum
In Ethereum, the mainnet chain will break down into 64 Shards. These Shards will now break down the flow of information and increase transactions. Speculations are, post Sharding, the Ethereum blockchain can handle about 100,000+ transactions per second.
Furthermore, due to the spread of data, the processing transactions are quicker with lesser transaction fees. Thus, Sharding makes the Ethereum blockchain more decentralized than before.
With a lower transaction fee and a Proof of Stake method, validators can validate the transactions quickly and get rewards. Since the stakes reduce, more validators can participate in the validation process, making it more decentralized.
Consequently, the security of Ethereum increases multifold due to Sharding. After the process is complete, Ethereum will employ a system where each shard receives a random node to process, verify and store the transaction in the blockchain.
The energy used to carry out and validate the reaction in the blockchain also reduces by 99.5%
What’s more? Sharding – breaking the mainnet into 64 pieces makes the transactions that occur in the blockchain faster – consuming lesser time and a lesser transaction fee from the user.
Thus, making Ethereum more efficient, scalable, and sustainable.
Summary
Sharding is a process of breaking up a whole into many parts. In blockchain technology, Sharding is adopted to ensure scalability. The Ethereum blockchain will adopt Sharding after the Merge is complete.
In Ethereum, due to Sharding, the mainnet chain breaks into 64 individual pieces. These Shards will perform as separate chains.
Sharding takes care of scalability and lowers the energy needed to validate the transactions. It increases security by assigning random nodes to the blockchain network.
This means hacking the network becomes 10x more difficult while the efficiency of the blockchain has increased by 100x.
Since many transactions will pass through the network at any given time, Ethereum will maintain the decentralized state by getting more validators.
All in all, Sharding makes Ethereum into a better blockchain – scalable, secure, and decentralized.
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