About this Research Topic
In recent years, the presence of blockchain technology has spread significantly across different areas of business. This broader adoption stems from the development of novel blockchain-based services like tokenization, decentralised finance, central bank digital coins, data integrity, and notarization, which provide functionality beyond that to traditional cryptocurrency transactions. The increase in number of users employing these tools poses considerable challenges in terms of the sustainability of decentralised ledger solutions on a larger scale, in particular for public Blockchains. For instance, micropayments, transaction costs, long-term mining rewards, flexibility in integrating new applications, and environmental impact control are just some of the issues that need to be addressed for a global employment of this technology. In this sense, scalability, understood as a constitutive feature of a given protocol to efficiently manage large information flows, is a fundamental requirement for a widespread blockchain utilization.
Scalability is one of the most debated topic in the blockchain community, especially for public decentralised protocols. So far, most of the proposed formulations rely on moving part of the transactions to an additional layer (often called layer 2), therefore compromising some of the blockchain distinctive features. Devising new approaches may require an interdisciplinary effort combining perspectives ranging from engineering optimisations to regulatory policies.
This Research Topic focuses on constitutive scalability solutions which do not require additional layers, thus the immutability for all the transactions is certified within the constitutive protocol. We invite contributions from different fields to tackle scalability of blockchain systems. The resulting booklet aims to provide an overview of state-of-the-art methods in this field and an informative reference to both academics and industrial practitioners.
We welcome articles of all types addressing scalability on the following topics:
• Cryptographic constructions (e.g. SNARKs, MPC, etc);
• Verifiable computation;
• Data on-chain;
• NFT (e.g. CryptoArt, etc.);
• Smart Contracts;
• Economic incentives;
• Mathematical modelling;
• Transactions management;
• Environmental impact;
• Market strategies;
• Network analysis.
Disclaimer: Dr. Pizzoferrato is Research Director at nChain AG.
Scalability is one of the most debated topic in the blockchain community, especially for public decentralised protocols. So far, most of the proposed formulations rely on moving part of the transactions to an additional layer (often called layer 2), therefore compromising some of the blockchain distinctive features. Devising new approaches may require an interdisciplinary effort combining perspectives ranging from engineering optimisations to regulatory policies.
This Research Topic focuses on constitutive scalability solutions which do not require additional layers, thus the immutability for all the transactions is certified within the constitutive protocol. We invite contributions from different fields to tackle scalability of blockchain systems. The resulting booklet aims to provide an overview of state-of-the-art methods in this field and an informative reference to both academics and industrial practitioners.
We welcome articles of all types addressing scalability on the following topics:
• Cryptographic constructions (e.g. SNARKs, MPC, etc);
• Verifiable computation;
• Data on-chain;
• NFT (e.g. CryptoArt, etc.);
• Smart Contracts;
• Economic incentives;
• Mathematical modelling;
• Transactions management;
• Environmental impact;
• Market strategies;
• Network analysis.
Disclaimer: Dr. Pizzoferrato is Research Director at nChain AG.
Keywords: blockchain, Bitcoin, Network scalability, Decentralization, Big blocks, Non-fungible tokens
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
