Decentralized systems such as the electrical network and the World Wide Web have been put on the scale by solving the bottlenecks of communication. Blockchains, a triumph of decentralized design, should follow the same scheme, but the first technical constraints made that many assimilate decentralization with ineffectiveness and slow performance.
While Ethereum will be 10 years old in July, he went from a developer playground in the backbone of Onchain Finance. While institutions like Blackrock and Franklin Templeton launch token funds and banks are deploying stablecoins, the question is now whether it can evolve to meet global demand – where heavy workloads and response times at Milliseconde are important.
For all this evolution, a hypothesis still persists: that blockchains must be transformed between decentralization, scalability and security. This “Blockchain Trilemma” has shaped the design of the protocol from the Ethereum Genesis block.
Trilemma is not a law of physics; This is a design problem that we finally learn to solve.
Lay of the earth on evolutionary blockchains
The co-founder Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has identified three properties for blockchain performance: decentralization (many autonomous nodes), security (resilience to malicious acts) and scalability (transaction speed). He presented the “Trilemma Blockchain”, suggesting that the improvement of two generally weakens the third, in particular the scalability.
This framing has shaped the path of Ethereum: the ecosystem has prioritized decentralization and safety, construction for robustness and tolerance for defects on thousands of nodes. But the performances have lagged behind, with delays in the propagation of blocks, consensus and the purpose.
To maintain decentralization during scaling, certain protocols on Ethereum reduce the participation of the validator or the responsibilities of the network of fragments; The optimistic rolls shift the execution of the chain and rely on evidence of fraud to maintain integrity; The conceptions of layer 2 aim to compress thousands of transactions in a single attached to the main chain, to unload the pressureive pressure but to introduce dependencies on the trusted nodes.
Security remains essential, as financial issues increase. The failures arise from errors in propagation of downtime, collusion or messages, which means that consensus stops or double. However, most scales are based on the most effective performance rather than guarantees in terms of protocol. Validators are encouraged to stimulate computing power or rely on quick networks, but lack guarantees that transactions will end.
This raises important questions for Ethereum and industry: can we be convinced that each transaction will finalize under load? Are probabilistic approaches sufficient to support applications worldwide?
While Ethereum is entering its second decade, answering these questions will be crucial for developers, institutions and billions of end users that rely on blockchains to deliver.
Decentralization as a force, not a limitation
Decentralization has never been the cause of the slow UX on Ethereum, the coordination of the network was. With good engineering, decentralization becomes a performance advantage and a catalyst on a scale.
It is intuitive that a centralized control center outperform a fully distributed center. How could it not be better to have an omniscient controller supervising the network? This is precisely where we would like to demystify hypotheses.
Read more: Martin Burgherr – why Ethereum “expensive” will dominate the institutional challenge
This belief started decades ago in Professor Medard’s laboratory at MIT, in order to make decentralized communication systems Provalent. Today, with the coding of random linear network (RLNC), this vision is finally implemented on a large scale.
Let’s be technical.
To resolve scalability, we must first understand where latency occurs: in blockchain systems, each node must observe the same operations in the same order to observe the same sequence of state changes from the initial state. This requires a consensus – a process where all nodes agree on a single proposed value.
Blockchains like Ethereum and Solana use a consensus based on the leader with predetermined time slots in which the nodes must agree, let’s call it, “D”. Choose too large and the finality slows down; Choose it too small and consensus fails; This creates a persistent compromise in performance.
In the consensual algorithm of Ethereum, each node tries to communicate its local value to others, through a series of messages of messages via the propagation of gossip. But because of network disturbances, such as congestion, bottlenecks, buffer overflow; Some messages can be lost or delayed and some may be duplicated.
Such incidents increase the time to spread information and, therefore, reaching consensus inevitably leads to large locations, in particular in larger networks. On a scale, many blockchains limit decentralization.
These blockchains require a certificate of a certain threshold of participants, such as two thirds of the issues, for each consensus. To achieve scalability, we must improve the efficiency of the dissemination of messages.
With the linear coding of the random network (RLNC), we aim to improve the scalability of the protocol, directly approaching the constraints imposed by current implementations.
Decentralize on a scale: the power of RLNC
The random linear network coding (RLNC) is different from traditional network codes. He is stateless, algebraic and entirely decentralized. Instead of trying to microchip traffic, each node mixes coded messages independently; However, gets optimal results, as if a central controller orchestrages the network. It was proven mathematically that no centralized planner would outdo this method. It is not common in the design of the system, and it is what makes this approach so powerful.
Instead of relaying raw messages, RLNC compatible nodes divide and transmit data from messages into coded elements using algebraic equations on finished fields. RLNC allows nodes to recover the original message using only a subset of these coded parts; Each message is not necessary to arrive.
It also avoids duplication by letting each knot mix what it receives in new unique linear combinations on the fly. This makes each exchange more informative and resilient to delays or network losses.
With Ethereum, validators now testing RLNC via Optimump2P – including the oven, p2p.org and Everstake – this change is no longer hypothetical. It’s already in motion.
Then, the architectures fueled by RLNC and the Pub-Sub protocols will connect to other existing blockchains helping them to evolve with a higher flow and lower latency.
A call for a new reference to industry
If Ethereum is to serve as a basis for global finance during its second decade, it must go beyond obsolete hypotheses. Its future will not be defined by compromises, but by proven performances. Trilemma is not a law of nature, it is a limitation of the old design, which we now have the power to overcome.
To meet the requirements of the adoption of the real world, we need systems designed with scalability as first -class principle, supported by prouvable performance guarantees, not compromise. RLNC offers a path to go. With mathematically founded flow guarantees in decentralized environments, it is a promising foundation for a more efficient and reactive Ethereum.
Read more: Paul Brody – Ethereum has already won
