Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum will eventually make 1 million transactions per second
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, explained in a recent OmiseGO AMA session that with second-layer solutions such as Sharding and Plasma, the Ethereum network could handle 1 million transactions per second and potentially more than 100 million transactions per second.
Scalability difficulties of the main networks of the Blockchain
Previously, at various conferences and presentations, Buterin pointed out that the Ethereum Blockchain protocol and the decentralized Blockchain networks, in general, have trouble managing scalability issues.
In September 2017, during an interview with venture capital investor Naval Ravikant at TechCrunch's Disrupt SF 2017 conference, Buterin noted that Bitcoin and Ethereum were processing three to six transactions per second at full capacity . He added that for the Blockchain to support large-scale payment networks such as Visa, stock markets such as Nasdaq and Internet of Things networks (IoT), it will have to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. .
"Bitcoin is currently processing just under three transactions per second and if it's close to four, it's already at full capacity. the Ethereum treats five per second and if it exceeds six, it is also at its maximum. On the other hand, Uber averages 12 per second, PayPal several hundreds, Visa several thousand, large stock exchanges tens of thousands, and in IoT, you speak in hundreds of thousands per second, "said Buterin.
In the OmiseGO AMA session, Buterin stated that second-layer scaling solutions currently being tested on the Ethereum testnet could allow the Ethereum Blockchain network to support large-scale decentralized applications with millions of users by taking an innovative approach to optimize the Blockchain.
The sharding in a specific segment divides a Blockchain network into fragments which are then equipped with a group of nodes responsible for processing the information of certain fragments. With Sharding enabled, not all nodes in the Blockchain are required to process each piece of data installed on it, which optimizes the information resolution process.
Plasma, a solution developed by Buterin and Lightning Network co-author Joseph Poon, works in the same way as the Bitcoin Lightning Network, because it allows the Ethereum to process micropayments by creating smaller networks of Blockchains without them. main blockchains to process information faster, thus optimizing the security of the main Ethereum protocol and thus not leaving the network vulnerable to potential attacks.
"The reason I think that layers 1 and 2 are complementary is that in the end, if you look at maths, the scalability gains of Layer 1 and Layer 2 enhancements are multiplying. If you have a Sharding solution, the Sharding solution itself could increase the scalability of Ethereum by a factor of 100 or more. But then, if you use Plasma above the scalability solution, then it means you do not do 100 times the amount of activity but you do 100 times more number of inputs, number of outputs despite the resolutions, "said Buterin.
1 million Tx / second
Buterin further noted that the synergy between Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions would increase Ethereum's scalability by 10,000x, enabling the network to handle millions of transactions per second and support most applications .
"So, if you get 100x of Sharding and 100x of plasma, these two give you a scalability gain of 10,000x, which means Blockchains will be powerful enough to handle most of the applications that people are trying to use with them. "
