Status, an Ethereum messenger, looking to bring mass adoption to Ethereum, announced the launch of Nimbus, it’s new client with a “particular focus on sharding,” as announced on August 1, 2018.
What is Sharding?
Sharding is an Ethereum 2.0 scaling implementation, where instead of every node verifying a transaction, a smaller subset of nodes verifies a transaction. This allows for parallel transactions to be confirmed, allowing for transaction capacity to increase.
Scaling is an issue that not only Ethereum faces, but also Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency that wants to be considered a real contender for mass adoption. While Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second edges Bitcoins seven transactions per second, it pales in comparison to payment processors like Paypal and VISA.
Sharding is crucial to the plans Ethereum developers have for the currency, and may even be the only way forward.
Other upgrades expected to come along with the release of Ethereum 2.0 include Casper, Plasma, and zk-STARKS.
Nimbus Is Lightweight Yet powerful
Nimbus is built on a programming language called Nim, allowing developers flexibility of being able to handle complex computations, while running on slower devices.
It has similarities to Python, which is used by the Ethereum Foundation for research, which should make porting existing research extremely easy.
Status expects several use cases of Ethereum 2.0, including mobile phone applications and IoT devices, and has designed Nimbus to thrive in such conditions.
And while there are many solid Ethereum clients already available for users, none have taken the “mobile-first implementation” that Nimbus has.
Nimbus is extensible, configurable, and modular to the user’s desires. Since Nimbus is to work on a numerous devices and different use cases (point of sale, tablets, etc.) Status wanted to create a client that was fast to deploy but still incredibly powerful and accessible.
Expertise and Roadmap
Status has a clear roadmap for them and will be sharing progress updates and more technical discussions regularly via their research blog.
Status has in the past worked on other functions of the Ethereum ecosystem, such as improving Whisper, working on Light Clients, and even doing UX research on web3 frameworks. Status also has a project called Status Incubate, where they help accelerate projects within Web3 by offering funding, office space, and services like mentorship.
For interested developers and users looking to take a look at the client, check out Nimbus’s full project proposal.
