NEAR Protocol Unlocks Blockchain Scalability with Sharding, Outpacing Ethereum’s L2 Solutions

• NEAR Protocol’s sharding enables linear growth, enhancing scalability by dividing the workload across multiple shards.
• Stateless validation in NEAR sharding allows faster node shuffling, ensuring full Layer 1 security for each shard.
• NEAR achieves seamless interoperability between shards, solving fragmentation issues and scaling Layer 1 directly.

NEAR Protocol has officially implemented sharding, a critical technology for blockchain scalability, according to analyst Justin Bons. This advancement addresses the blockchain trilemma by enabling massive capacity without sacrificing decentralization. Stateless validation, the final component in this scaling method, was introduced in the NEAR 2.0 update on August 12, 2024.

Horizontal Scaling in Action

Sharding divides the workload across different groupings of nodes, known as shards. Unlike traditional models where all nodes verify all transactions, sharding introduces a more efficient system. 

It enables unbounded scalability through linear growth, a vast improvement over the previous quadratic growth paradigm. In this system, each shard processes only a portion of the state, which enhances scalability. 

Ethereum pursued this technology for years before abandoning it in favor of Layer-2 (L2) solutions in 2022, citing the difficulty of sharding. Notably, other chains like NEAR and Elrond (EGLD) have succeeded where Ethereum paused.

Stateless Validation and Interoperability

NEAR’s sharding approach introduces a unique model, where shards generate chunks that combine into a single block. This eliminates the need for a central coordinating chain, a bottleneck in other sharded systems. 

Stateless validation, a key feature of this implementation, facilitates faster shuffling of validators between shards. This ensures that every shard benefits from Layer-1 (L1) security while optimizing the management of blockchain state. 

Additionally, NEAR offers perfect interoperability between shards, solving fragmentation and composability issues by scaling the L1 itself.

Overcoming Trade-Offs in Speed

While sharding introduces a minor delay compared to fully parallelized chains, the difference is minimal, measured in seconds. This trade-off is seen as a small price to pay for superior scalability and security. 

L2 scaling solutions, which Ethereum now promotes, are considered to have little justification in this space. With its successful implementation of sharding, NEAR positions itself at the forefront of blockchain innovation, even though the achievement initially had little attention.