A Framework for Blockchain Modularity

Scaling public and permissionless blockchains is challenging because it often involves sacrificing some extent of decentralization and security. This is also known as “the scalability trilemma.” Today, Bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the most utilized, decentralized, and secure blockchains, can only process approximately 5 and 15 transactions per second (tps), respectively. 

The decentralization aspect of a full-featured chain is achieved by a high level of redundancy with a diversity of full nodes. Each full node independently verifies each transaction, updates the global state accordingly, and maintains a record of the entire blockchain data.