Decentralized systems such as the electricity grid and the staggered world network solving communication bottlenecks. Block chains, a triumph of decentralized design, must follow the same pattern, but early technical limitations caused many to equip decentralization with inefficiency and slow performance.
When Ethereum turns 10 this July, it has evolved from a developer playground in Ochain Finance’s backbone. As institutions such as Blackrock and Franklin Templeton launch tokenized funds, and banks deploy Stablecoins, the question now is whether it can climb to meet global demand, where heavy work charges and response times at the level of milliseconds matter.
Despite all this evolution, an assumption still persists: that block chains must exchange between decentralization, scalability and safety. This “blockchain trilema” has shaped the protocol design from the Ethereum Genesis block.
Trilema is not a physics law; It is a design problem that we are finally learning to solve.
Lay of Earth in Scalable Blockchains
The Ethereum co -founder, Vitalik Buterin, identified three properties for blockchain performance: decentralization (many autonomous nodes), security (resistance to malicious acts) and scalability (transaction speed). He introduced the “blockchain trilema”, which suggests that improving two typically weakens the third, especially scalability.
This framing shape to the Ethereum path: the ecosystem prioritized decentralization and security, building to obtain robustness and fault tolerance in thousands of nodes. But the performance has been delayed, with delays in the spread of blocks, consensus and purpose.
To maintain decentralization when climbing, some protocols in Ethereum reduce the participation of the validator or the responsibilities of the fragments network; Optimistic Rollups, chain change execution and trust fraud tests to maintain integrity; The designs of layer 2 aim to compress thousands of transactions in a single committed to the main chain, downloading the scalability pressure but introducing units in trust nodes.
Security remains essential, as financial bets increase. Fallas come from the time of inactivity, collusion or errors of propagation of messages, which causes consensus to stop or stop. However, most of the scale is based on the performance of the best effort instead of guarantees at the protocol level. Validators are encouraged to increase computer power or depend on fast networks, but they lack guarantees that transactions will be completed.
This raises important questions for Ethereum and the industry: can we be sure that each transaction will end under load? Are the probabilistic approaches sufficient to support applications on a global scale?
As Ethereum enters his second decade, answering these questions will be crucial for developers, institutions and billions of end users who depend on blockchains to deliver.
Decentralization as a strength, not a limitation
Decentralization was never the cause of UX slow in Ethereum, the coordination of the network was. With adequate engineering, decentralization becomes an advantage of performance and a scale catalyst.
It feels intuitive that a centralized command center would exceed a completely distributed one. How could it be better to have an omniscient controller to supervise the network? Here is precisely where we would like to demystify the assumptions.
Read more: Martin Burgherr – Why ‘Ethereum’ Caro ‘will dominate the Institutional Defi
This belief began decades ago in Professor Medard’s laboratory at MIT, to make decentralized communication systems probably optimal. Today, with random linear network coding (RLNC), that vision can finally be implemented at scale.
Let’s be technicians.
To address scalability, we must first understand where latency occurs: in the Blockchain systems, each node must observe the same operations in the same order to observe the same sequence of changes of state from the initial state. This requires consensus, a process in which all nodes agree a single proposed value.
Blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, use a consensus based on leaders with predetermined time spaces in which the nodes must reach an agreement, let’s call it by calling it “D”. Choose too big and the purpose slows down; Choose too small and consensus fails; This creates persistent compensation in performance.
In the Ethereum consensus algorithm, each node tries to communicate its local value to others, through a series of messages of messages through the propagation of gossip. But due to network disturbances, such as congestion, bottlenecks, buffer overflow; Some messages can be lost or delayed and others can double.
Such incidents increase the time for the spread of information and, therefore, achieve consensus inevitably results in large spaces, especially in larger networks. On a scale, many blockchains limit decentralization.
These block chains require certification of a certain threshold of participants, such as two thirds of bets, for each consensus round. To achieve scalability, we need to improve the efficiency of messages.
With the linear random network coding (RLNC), our goal is to improve the scalability of the protocol, directly addressing the restrictions imposed by current implementations.
Decentralize on scale: the power of RLNC
The random linear network coding (RLNC) is different from traditional network codes. It is stateless, algebraic and completely decentralized. Instead of treating traffic micrognition, each node mixes independently encoded messages; However, it achieves optimal results, as if a central controller were orchestrating the network. It has been mathematically demonstrated that no centralized programmer would overcome this method. That is not common in system design, and that is what makes this approach so powerful.
Instead of transmitting without processing, the nodes enabled for RLNC divide and transmit messages of messages to encoded elements using algebraic equations through finite fields. RLNC allows the nodes to recover the original message using only a subset of these coded pieces; There is no need for each message to arrive.
It also avoids duplication by allowing each node to mix what it receives in new and unique linear combinations on the march. This makes each exchange more informative and resistant to the delays or losses of the network.
With the validators of Ethereum now testing RLNC through optimump2p, including Kiln, P2P.org and Everstake, this change is no longer hypothetical. It is already moving.
Next, RLNC-promoted architectures and pub-Sub protocols will connect to other existing blockchains, helping them to climb with greater performance and lower latency.
A call for a new industry reference point
If Ethereum will serve as the basis of global finances in his second decade, he must go beyond obsolete assumptions. Its future will not be defined by compensation, but by verifiable performance. Trilema is not a law of nature, it is a limitation of ancient design, which we now have the power to overcome.
To meet the demands for the adoption of the real world, we need scalability designed systems as a first class principle, backed by verifiable performance guarantees, not compensation. RLNC offers a way forward. With mathematically based on decentralized environments, it is a promising base for a more representative and receptive Ethereum.
Read more: Paul Brody – Ethereum has already won
