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Public Blockchains Scalability: An Examination of Sharding and Segregated Witness

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Blockchain Cybersecurity, Trust and Privacy

Part of the book series: Advances in Information Security ((ADIS,volume 79))

Abstract

Recently, public and permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have been facing a formidable challenge in the form of scalability which has hindered their expected growth. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum can process fewer than 20 transactions per second, which is significantly lower than their centralized counterpart such as VISA which can process approximately 1700 transactions per second. In realizing this hindrance for wide range adoption of blockchains for building advanced and large scalable systems, the blockchain community has proposed several solutions including Sharding and Segregated Witness (SegWit). Although these proposals are innovative, they still suffer from the blockchain trilemma of scalability, security, and decentralization. Moreover, at this time, little is known or discussed regarding factors related to design choices, feasibility, limitations, and other issues in adopting these solutions in public and permissionless blockchains. Hence, this paper provides the first comprehensive state-of-the-art review of sharding and segregated witness in public and permissionless blockchains, identifying current advancements, highlighting their limitations and discussing possible remedies for the overall improvement of the blockchain domain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://medium.com/chainrift-research/bitcoins-attack-vectors-51-attacks-a96deac43774.

  2. 2.

    https://blockexplorer.com/blocks.

  3. 3.

    https://etherscan.io/.

  4. 4.

    https://altcointoday.com/bitcoin-ethereum-vs-visa-paypal-transactions-per-second/.

  5. 5.

    https://ethgasstation.info/.

  6. 6.

    https://www.thundercore.com/.

  7. 7.

    https://www.algorand.com/.

  8. 8.

    https://spacemesh.io/.

  9. 9.

    https://solana.com/.

  10. 10.

    https://cointelegraph.com/explained/proof-of-work-explained.

  11. 11.

    https://blockgeeks.com/guides/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/.

  12. 12.

    https://lbtc.io/.

  13. 13.

    https://cosmos.network/.

  14. 14.

    https://medium.com/utopiapress/what-is-ethereum-serenity-f433d824c974.

  15. 15.

    https://nearprotocol.com/.

  16. 16.

    https://kadena.io/en/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Software Engineering and Game Development, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA, USA

    Amritraj Singh

  2. College of Computing and Software Engineering, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA, USA

    Reza M. Parizi

  3. Department of Information Technology, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA, USA

    Meng Han

  4. Cyber Science Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Ali Dehghantanha

  5. School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Hadis Karimipour

  6. Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

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  1. Amritraj Singh
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Correspondence to Reza M. Parizi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

  2. Cyber Science Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Ali Dehghantanha

  3. College of Computing and Software Engineering, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA, USA

    Reza M. Parizi

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Singh, A., Parizi, R.M., Han, M., Dehghantanha, A., Karimipour, H., Choo, KK.R. (2020). Public Blockchains Scalability: An Examination of Sharding and Segregated Witness. In: Choo, KK., Dehghantanha, A., Parizi, R. (eds) Blockchain Cybersecurity, Trust and Privacy. Advances in Information Security, vol 79. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38181-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38181-3_11

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