Cryptocurrency scalability is an issue, one that acts as a huge hurdle in the pursuit towards cryptocurrency adoption. Scalability issues means that sometimes, transactions aren’t quick enough. Networks can’t handle huge amounts of traffic and therefore, if adoption is the way forward, networks may become clogged and unworkable.
Status.im is a Ethereum blockchain solution that allows developers to use the blockchain via mobile phones. Within this, they can browse the web, send secure messages and of course make payments. In a move to try and improve the scalability of the Ethereum network, Status.im have kick started a new project called Nimbus.
What is Nimbus?
According to Jaxenter:
“Status.im wants to bring the masses to Ethereum. This can’t happen without solving the scalability issue: it already takes way too long for a transaction to go through. The transaction time is a hard limit on further adoption. Nimbus is a sharding client implementation for Ethereum. It’s designed to perform well on IoT and mobile devices, including older smartphones with resource-restricted hardware. Nimbus’ extensible, configurable, and modular design ensures that it is production ready. It’s a client designed to allow for rapid iteration.”
See more for yourself, here.
Essentially, Nimbus encourages sharding to take place. Sharding is a process that splits up the state of data on the blockchain to speed up the network, whilst maintaining decentralisation and security. I suppose it’s a bit like freeing up a traffic queue of cars by putting everyone on a scooter instead. They are able to move a little more freely and thus, congestion will be eased.
The goal for Nimbus is to improve scalability on the Ethereum network to increase its chances of seeing mainstream adoption. Nimbus could very well allow Ethereum to become as popular as Bitcoin amongst adoption enthusiasts and we could well see Nimbus take off as an essential component on the Ethereum blockchain. Of course, sharding does pose issues and stresses in its own right, but assuming Status.im have thought this through, their product should have a positive impact on the network.
This is especially important when we look back at the news this week. The Ethereum blockchain was clogged up by a rogue smart contract that eventually increased the transaction costs on the blockchain to over $1.00. The problem has been fixed but I guess in its essence, this proves that scalability issues do need to be addressed, hopefully, Nimbus will do just that.
