Comparing sharding technologies

Shard chains have seen a significant amount of user adoption of late. In an earlier piece, The Block Research covered the rapid growth in user adoption and total value locked (TVL) of these ecosystems in detail. In this piece, we will discuss the technical details behind each shard chain and the corresponding advantages and disadvantages.

Shard chains improve blockchains’ scalability by increasing the block space available for more transactions, thereby reducing gas fees. They can theoretically do so without necessarily sacrificing the extent of decentralization. On the contrary, most other scaling solutions are generally faced with significant trade-offs as described in the scalability trilemma by Vitalik Buterin.