Grokking Cartesi Rollups, Part 1

The scalability issue at a glance

The blockchain technology stack is often viewed as serving several crucial functions, including consensus, data availability, and execution. Until relatively recently, these functions were all performed by individual blockchains like Ethereum. This setup, referred to as a monolithic blockchain, doesn’t scale very well.

Monolithic chains struggle to scale without sacrificing decentralization, due to the incredible demands placed on the nodes that validate the network’s state. With one chain handling every function, the same set of nodes is simultaneously called upon to verify each and every action, by every DApp and user in the network.

As usage increases, DApps and users are forced to compete for blockspace, which becomes an unmanageably scarce resource. The result is those who can’t win blockspace bidding wars are excluded from participating in the network.

Continue reading over on our blog: https://cartesi.io/blog/understanding-cartesi-rollups