My original intent in relation to this post was to create a post majoring on the Polygon ecosystem but in looking into the subject of Polygon there emerged another interesting subject of scalability which I found interesting myself & thought would be an interesting subject to share in this post.
Early Foundations Laid For the Building-Block of Web 3 Blockchain Technology
The vast majority of people associate Satoshi Nakamoto with cryptocurrency creation but fail to realize that it was in fact the Knights Templar who laid the foundation for Satoshi Nakamoto to build on. Not many people today think of the Knights Templar giving the world the idea of virtual money.
The Rapid Development of Early Communication & Mailing Systems
Communication systems have rapidly developed since what the Mogul Empire called the Yam which was dependent on a series of postal relay systems stretching across the vast Mogul Empire, America's 1860s Pony Express mailing system was a building block built on the foundation of the Yam which was laid by the Mogul empire but where riders such as Bronco Charlie rode cross-country from Missouri to California in around ten days or even less than ten days, so the Yam was likened to what today in cryptocurrency is layer 1 & the Pony Express likened to layer 2 & then after the expansion of the transcontinental railroad the way was paved for Hudson Bay Company mail order catalogue shopping & even inventors such as Samuel Finley Breese Morse the inventor of the telegraph & the Morse Code alphabet & his development of a long distance instant electronic communication method laid the foundation for today's 24/7 mass media & with the development of Samuel Finley Breese Morse's telegraph & Morse Code & the changing landscape of technology came the TELEX system which banks relied on but was slow & insecure given the fact that in 1969 the first Apranet link between UCLA & Stanford Research Institute was established & the internet was birthed as a network that links research centers. Then in 1973 in Brussels, Belgium the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications AKA SWIFT changed international remittances by sending payment orders between institutions' accounts using what's called SWIFT codes & in fact it was SWIFT that standardized International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN) & Bank Identifier Codes (BIC) formats. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications owns & administers the Bank Identifier Code system allowing the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications to quickly identify a bank & then send a payment order securely. Sixteen years after the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications was founded in Brussels Tim Berners Lee circulated a proposal to his management at CERN for MESH & then in 1993 CERN decided to offer the world what would become the worldwide web originally designed as a tool for researchers at CERN to share information & the foundation of web 1 was laid for the building block of web 2.
Telex: The Foundation For The Building Blocks of The SWIFT Network, Ripple Network & Web 3 Remittances.
But in 2008 blockchain technology was the foundation for the building block of decentralized web 3 & just like the TELEX system was insecure slow amidst technological advancements such as Apranet, amidst blockchain technology Ethereum focused on decentralization but the focus on decentralization was at the expense of scalability which meant that like the TELEX system transactions were slow & costly. But keep in mind banks buy currencies from each other at mid market price which is the real exchange rate which oftentimes is not passed to consumers when it comes to remittances so what do banks do to make money? They buy currencies at mid-market price & then markup the mid-market price to generate extra money from remittances but the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications is the foundation for the building block of the Ripple Network which ushers in a new era of web 3 remittances imagine a remittance in Euros sent to Australia & converted into Australian dollars costing 6¢ & the recipient in Australia received the funds in around 5 seconds, Ripple Network has made this imaginary scenario a reality as the ancient crock pot slow-cooker culture which evolved into the quick service microwave culture has shifted into the new touch-of-a-button everything at your fingertips & bot culture.
What Exactly is Blockchain Scalability?
Simply explained blockchain scalability is the number of transactions a network can handle per second.
Transactions Per Second (TPS):
Visa 24,000 TPS
Bitcoin 7 TPS
Ethereum 20-30 TPS.
Let's use this illustration: a Go Transit double decker bus can seat 78 people. Let's say the average waiting time for a bus is 12 minutes & the average journey time from point A to point B is 56 minutes.
• 12 minutes is the average wait time to board the bus & it takes 78 passengers to board the bus to reach maximum seating capacity on the bus = throughput
• The journey time from point A to point B = finality
• 12 minute wait time from point A + 56 minute journey time to get to point B = total journey time of 1 hour 8 minutes = confirmation/verification time.
But if you add network congestion into the equation the bus still holds 78 passengers for the single journey from point A to point B but journey time increases & what this means is verification time increases.
A protocol handling a large amount of TPS with verification time of 1 day is not as good as a protocol handling the same amount of TPS with verification time of 5 seconds.
The First Blockchain
The original blockchain brought to the table security & decentralization but lacked scalability
The Scalability Trilemma
Three features a blockchain seeks to possess:
1. Scalability
2. Security
3. Decentralization
But a blockchain had only two of these & the hot pursuit was to seek a solution which solves the scalability trilemma.
Security
In relation to blockchain security it is generally difficult for cybersecurity criminals to hack into the blockchain consensus process arming which arms cybersecurity criminals with the ammunition to add any transaction to the blocks. A blockchain consensus process requires the majority approval of the full nodes.
The higher the number of full nodes the better the blockchain security.
Scaling
There are 2 ways you can scale:
1. Layer 2
2. Side chain
Layer 2 scaling is dependent on the security of the main layer such as the Ethereum blockchain. Plasma is one popular option.
Sidechains are dependent on their own security models oftentimes by having a separate consensus mechanism.
The aim of the Polygon ecosystem is the creation of multiple scaling solutions & offers a framework making it easy for new projects to build their own customizable scaling solutions
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