Cyber Capital Founder: Monolithic is the Future of Blockchain Scalability

Original author: Justin Bons, Founder of Cyber Capital

Original compilation: Luffy, Foresight News

There are three methods for achieving scalability in blockchain:

• "L2 scaling" (BTC, ETH, TIA)
• Parallelization (SOL, APT, SUI)
• Sharding (TON, NEAR, EGLD)

Sharding is the future, and parallelization is an inevitable trend. In my view, this is the endgame of it all.

Due to the poor user experience and weak token economic model brought by "L2 scaling," it fails to keep fees within L1 limits, and fragmentation harms user experience. The monolithic blockchain scaling methods (parallelization and sharding) do not have these fatal flaws, as they are a coherent whole.

Parallelization is an inevitable trend because it is very foolish for client software not to support multithreading. All modern CPUs have multiple cores, yet chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin still process transactions sequentially, leading to most validator hardware being underutilized, which is a huge waste.

The same goes for sharded chains, as each shard should be parallelized.

• Maximize the capacity of individual shards
• Sharding is a further realization of parallelization logic
• By extending concurrency from multicore to distributing workloads across multiple computers

This breaks the previous scalability limits.

Sharded systems can now achieve over 100,000 TPS, with a theoretical limit close to 1 million TPS. At the same time, sharding has relatively low requirements for nodes. This is how sharding solves the blockchain trilemma.

Traditional blockchain designs face the trilemma. Because at some point, the requirements for nodes become so high that they threaten decentralization. Since all nodes must validate all global state updates, it fundamentally cannot scale. Sharding solves this problem.

Unlike traditional designs, sharded chains can scale capacity based on usage, while non-sharded chains will eventually face a ceiling. When a sharded chain gains more usage and adoption from validators, it can launch a new shard. In other words, sharding is linearly scalable.

Other blockchains, on the other hand, exhibit quadratic scaling, meaning that as the network grows, the requirements for nodes increase until they reach physical limits. There is a ceiling to the work we can process within a single silicon chip compared to what can be achieved through a computer network.

There are many misconceptions about sharding, and I will address two points:

• "You can attack a single shard"; rebuttal: since validators are random, shards share L1 security
• "There is no composability"; rebuttal: cross-shard communication is natively built-in, ensuring seamless interoperability

The irony of these criticisms is that "L2 scaling" is more prone to the same mistakes:

• "You can attack a single L2"; this is true, especially considering that managing keys and decentralized orderers require their own consensus
• "There is no composability"; this is also true, without enshrining

Fortunately, the leap from parallelization to sharding is much shorter compared to modular blockchains.

Meanwhile, parallelization may provide sufficient capacity for many years to come, which is why I support the latter two solutions.

Monolithic scaling still allows for modular scaling using L2, letting the free market choose the best solution; whereas modular scaling is more akin to a planned economy that enforces modular scaling on L1.

We should let the market choose another L1/L2.

We must draw a line in modular blockchains, and I am convinced that modular scaling is a technological dead end. Worse, it sets us back because people mistakenly associate modular design with cryptocurrency. Slow, expensive, and difficult—this is modularity.

Monolithic design, on the other hand, is fast, cheap, easy to use, and understand. If the community provides enough resistance, Ethereum may still revert to sharding, which could lead to a fork reminiscent of the block size debate, as conservatives try to hold onto their power.

There is no doubt that the entrenched power within Ethereum will not be easily overturned. Venture capital and tokens provide strong incentives for Ethereum's L1 scaling. Since Ethereum also lacks good on-chain governance, voting with one's feet may be easier.

I am not an enemy of Ethereum, but a friend. If I am right, then Ethereum's biggest enemy lies within its entrenched leadership, and the same goes for Bitcoin.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Putting tribalism aside, the bottom line is whether the evolution of blockchain technology is on the right path: as I said, monolithic scaling. Advocates of modular scaling often cite the blockchain trilemma as a supporting argument for this approach.

I respect this ideology because there are many excellent and smart people supporting "L2 scaling."

However, this belief is based on a flawed assumption. Evidence for viable L1 scaling is continuously piling up, and it is turning into a mountain. It is too large to be ignored, as competitive blockchains surpass Bitcoin and Ethereum on multiple metrics.