Scaling Blockchains

Shanif Dhanani
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

I just came across perhaps the best article I’ve ever seen around the idea of scaling blockchains. It’s a bit long and it gets technical in the end, but I would highly recommend reading it for anyone that’s interested in the topic. Here’s the link: https://hackernoon.com/blockchains-dont-scale-not-today-at-least-but-there-s-hope-2cb43946551a

A couple of my own thoughts:

  • In order to make sure blockchains just aren’t a passing fad, we’re going to need to get organizations to use them (more on this topic in a later post). One of the biggest risks they’re going to face is having the infrastructure to process their transactions, and scalability is one of the key concerns in that risk.
  • This is a major issue for all blockchains, as such, there are a lot of smart people working on a lot of different solutions. Some of them are highly technical and it may not be super important for crypto investors to understand them all, but then again…
  • Different blockchains are going to have different implementations. Ethereum is already thinking about this and their big push is towards Proof-of-Stake and Raiden, though there may be others. For Bitcoin, it was the recent fork and upcoming Segwit2x.
  • Private blockchains may not have this issue, but then again, it’s hard to say how many private chains will have the scalability needs that the public chains will have, so this may be a moot point for them anyway. And in any case, private blockchains really go against the base purpose for a blockchain-based app as it is.

I’m curious to see where it all goes. I think Proof-of-Stake has the most intriguing properties right now, but Raiden and Project Lightning from Bitcoin have a pretty good chance of being implemented and offer a lot of good solutions as well.

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Shanif Dhanani

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Co-founder & CEO of Apteo. We’re a fintech startup that’s building a data science platform for everyone. Sign up free at www.apteo.co.

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