A Comprehensive Survey on Sharding in Blockchains

Abstract

Blockchain technology has been widely used in many fields, such as smart cities, smart health care, and smart manufacturing, due to its anonymity, decentralization, and tamper resistance in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. However, poor scalability has severely affected the widespread adoption of traditional blockchain technology in high-throughput and low-latency applications. Therefore, based on the three-layer architecture, this study presents a variety of solutions to improve the scalability of the blockchain. As the scale of the network expands, one of the most practical ways to achieve horizontal scalability is sharding, where the network is divided into multiple subnetworks to avoid repeated communication overhead, storage, and calculations. This study provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to blockchain sharding, along with a detailed comparison and evaluation for primarily considered sharding mechanisms. We also provide the detailed calculations and then analyze the characteristics of existing solutions along with our insights.

A Survey on Consensus Protocols and Attacks on Blockchain Technology

“…In [89], Jinwen Xi et al outlined sharding knowledge, and emphasized the need for sharding in systematized and scalable blockchain design, which includes cross-shard transaction atomicity, intra-shard consensus protocol, and general enhancements. They also presented precise computations and unique insights based on multidimensional analysis of the features and constraints of the investigated sharding processes, as well as a comprehensive comparison and evaluation.…”

Retracted: A Comprehensive Survey on Sharding in Blockchains

“…Mobile Information Systems and the authors have retracted the article titled "A Comprehensive Survey on Sharding in Blockchains" [1], due to substantial similarities with a previously published article by different authors [2].…”