Blockchain scalability

Increasing the maximum block sizeblock size is a simple way to increase the number of transactions processed per block, therefore increasing the maximum transactions processed per second. If the average transaction size is assumed to stay constant, a doubling of the maximum block size would result in a doubling of the maximum transactions per second possible.

The ratio between the time it takes to solve a proof-of-work puzzle and create a block and the time it takes to propagate a transaction to the network determines the stale blockstale block rate. A stale block is a valid block mined after another node has mined a valid block, but before the existence of that valid block has propagated to the network. A stale block does not exist in the longest chain as mining continues on the other chain. Thus all computation work done on the stale block is lost and no reward is granted.

Increasing the transaction throughput rate or block size of a blockchain also increase the rate at which the size of the blockchain increases. Thus increased size of a blockchain results in an increased burden placed on full nodes. This impacts the ability for widely distributed individuals to run a full node, and therefore the decentralized properties of the blockchain.

ShardingSharding is a method where only a subset of nodes to need validate each transaction.

Plasma Plasma and other implementations of child chains which report information to root chains.

For example, Bitcoin could process ~3.3 transactions per secondtransactions per second with the following parameters:

Directed acyclic graphDirected acyclic graph based ledgers are a generalization of the single chain blockchain.