What are the salient properties of Distributed LEDGER Technology (DLT)? Blockchain is the most popular DLT. What are its properties? Those are widely known because it is the carrier of the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger, timestamped, immutable, programmable, and so on. Blockchain is mostly (but not always) decentralized. But is blockchain (and bitcoin) scalable? That is an important question.
The distributed ledgers are, after all, distributed and are mostly decentralized
All the member participants of the network have the full view of the ledger for transparency. It can be a permission-less ledger or a permission-ed ledger. There is mostly no central authority, and the ledgers are generally decentralized.
The distributed ledgers are timestamped, anonymous, and unanimous
The ledgers have an appropriate timestamp. The participants of the ledgers are anonymous or may hold pseudonyms. (Does the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" demonstrate that?). All the participants of the network unanimously validate the ledgers.
The distributed ledgers are programmable, secure, and immutable
The distributed ledgers are programmable, and a lot of things can be done. The distributed ledgers are cryptographically secured, i.e., all the ledgers are fully encrypted. All records are validated, and after the validation, each record on the ledgers is immutable.
BUT all distributed ledgers are not scalable!
For example, blockchain is not scalable. As the blockchain network grows, more time and energy will be spent to solve the Proof-of-Work puzzle. This is the main reason why blockchain is not showing a bright future.
Blockchain is not a scalable distributed ledger
The on-chain transaction processing capacity of the bitcoin network is limited by the block size limit and the average block creation time. These are the bottlenecks that constrain the throughput of the bitcoin network.
The number of unconfirmed bitcoin transactions increases every moment
You will be amazed to see how many bitcoin transactions remain unconfirmed. The number is growing every moment very fast!The only way to get a stuck transaction confirmed is to increase the fee
The blockchain community is trying hard to patch a solution to this scaling problem
Lighting NetworkTumblebit are some of the worth noting projects those try to surmount the scalability problem of the bitcoin network. But can these reduce both transaction time and cost?
A scalable distributed ledger is much wanted
The success of distributed ledger technology relies on its scalability. It should scale and perform the increasing volume of transactions in a smaller time and with minimal cost. Some new block-less distributed ledgers, such as show promise, as the network grows, the time of each transaction reduces, and the transaction cost is practically nil.
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