Waves platform, the custom blockchain token initiative targeting mass-market consumer and business adoption, has announced a series of measures to enable greater network scalability. Scalability is a hot issue for cryptocurrency platforms. Since every transaction is recorded on the blockchain, the requirement of resources to process and store the information continuously increases. Bitcoin itself has been the subject of numerous scalability proposals, including Segregated Witness (SegWit) to improve its current maximum capacity and allow greater adoption.
The Waves team has made a series of publications and presentations aimed at addressing various aspects of scalability which will be integrated into the Waves protocol in near future. Early in January, Leonid Reyzin delivered a presentation titled “Improving Authenticated Dynamic Dictionaries” at Real World Crypto 2017. It offered details about possible ways to streamline the large and growing key value store associated with blockchain transactions. The implementation of authenticated data structures allows for continued use of lower-powered devices to maintain the network, enabling greater efficiency than current approaches.
Next-gen Proof of Stake and Choices for Miners are options that can dramatically increase transaction throughput. Using these combined techniques, the Waves development team is aiming to improve security and create a robust network but also to raise the transaction capacity. Blockchains need to address scalability issues before it can compete with traditional payments networks. An updated scalability roadmap for Waves will be released in due course, detailing how these different methods will allow the platform to achieve the capacity it needs for mass-market adoption.
