One of the greatest innovations of all time is the nascence of the first cryptocurrency in 2008 known as Bitcoin; built to function on the blockchain technology. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto to serve as a digital asset that will replace fiat money. Satoshi structured the bitcoin to operate on the blockchain platform.
The blockchain is a continuously updated list containing records known as blocks linked together and well secured using cryptography. Each block has a cryptographic hash of previous block, a time stamp and a transaction data. A blockchain is designed to inherently resist any form of data modification. The emergence of blockchain has led to the birth of thousands of other cryptocurrencies.
Today, cryptocurrencies are gradually replacing fiat currency and are used as a medium of exchange for goods and services. They also serve as a store or value with a powerful cryptography to guarantee safety of financial transactions. The blockchain is evolving and there are new innovations and improvements added to the platform fathered by Nakamoto.
For a cryptocurrency network to function optimally, it requires the use of sharding. Sharding helps to drastically reduce the data that users need to join the network and verify transactions as soon as possible. This translates to offer a much more scalable network.
Sharding is the horizontal partitioning of data in a database or search engine. Each individual partition is referred to as a shard or database shard. Every shard is held on a separate database server instance, to spread load.
There is a great need for making available a scalable sharding model that has an edge over existing alternatives which increase efficiency while ensuring improved hash balance conditions in scalability, security and decentralization. The novel sharding solution is Elrond.
The Elrond sharding model utilizes linear scalability to allow more nodes be a part of the network by processing transactions. Elrond increases network performance, reduces energy consumption and does not require much computational needs thereby boosting its efficacy above contemporary innovations.
Elrond adopts the PoS (Proof of Stake) consensus algorithm which checks the excessive use of energy and computational prerequisites. It is different from what is obtainable on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks where the PoW (Proof of Work) blockchain consensus is used. Each node is requires to solve very difficult mathematical problems which end up consuming a lot of energy and emits much heat. Elrond functions by selecting and bringing together random validators on a consensus called Secure Proof of Stake (SPoS).
Elrond is designed with top notch safety features to resist various forms of cyber attacks such as the rogue key attack, Sybil attack, DDos attack to mention a few. The attacks will be curtailed by stake locking, use of multiple signatures, pruning mechanism, random sampling etc.
You can read more and be a part of the Elrond project through any of the links below.
Web: http://elrond.com
Reddit: https://community.elrond.com/poc/reddit/
Medium: https://medium.com/elrondnetwork
White paper: https://elrond.com/files/Elrond_Whitepaper_EN.pdf
Twitter: https://community.elrond.com/poc/twitter/
Telegram: https://t.me/ElrondNetwork