A summary of blockchain scaling

Blockchains today are not scalable, as seen from the congestion and high fees users are experiencing. While numerous efforts have been made to change this, the solutions offered today usually face a trade-off of some kind. For example, rollups introduce additional security assumptions, alternative layer 1s lose some extent of decentralization and sharding brings in numerous technical complications. None of these solutions are perfect, but it is imperative to look at them as a whole and compare their corresponding advantages and disadvantages to understand how blockchains will develop in the future.

In the case of smart contract platforms, ever since the massive congestion caused by CryptoKitties on Ethereum in 2017, the landscape of blockchains has shifted towards a multi-chain ecosystem and/or a rollup-centric Ethereum. Despite these developments, the number of transactions on Ethereum is still on the uptrend.