NEAR Protocol full sharding went live, unlocking unlimited scalability

NEAR Protocol has officially implemented full sharding, marking a breakthrough in blockchain scalability, according to Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, one of Europe's oldest cryptocurrency funds.

On Sept 23, 2024, Bons announced the milestone on X (formerly Twitter), hailing it as a game-changer that addresses the long-standing blockchain trilemma—balancing security, decentralization, and scalability—once and for all.

Sharding, a horizontal scaling solution, breaks up the processing workload among different groupings of nodes, or shards, allowing for linear growth and unbounded scalability.

This contrasts with traditional blockchain models where all nodes verify all transactions, a process that becomes inefficient at scale. By distributing the state among shards, NEAR enables a more efficient and scalable infrastructure.

Bons also noted that while Ethereum initially pursued sharding as part of its development, it shifted focus to Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions by 2022, citing the complexity of implementing sharding. NEAR, however, has succeeded where Ethereum pivoted, joining a small group of blockchains, including EGLD, to implement sharding in production.

NEAR's sharding system is unique in its approach. Unlike other chains that rely on a central beacon or meta chain to coordinate shards, NEAR allows shards to produce chunks that are merged into a single block.

This reduces bottlenecks and boosts efficiency, even at high transaction rates. The protocol also leverages stateless validation to shuffle nodes between shards more quickly, maintaining Layer 1 (L1) security across all shards.

A standout feature of NEAR’s sharding implementation is its perfect interoperability between shards, enabling seamless communication and eliminating the fragmentation challenges seen in other blockchains. This integrated design makes Layer 2 scaling solutions increasingly unnecessary, as NEAR's architecture provides superior scalability without compromising composability.

While sharding may introduce a slight delay compared to purely parallelized systems, Bons argued that the trade-off is minimal and justified given the comprehensive benefits of NEAR's design.

NEAR's successful sharding launch positions it as a leader in blockchain scalability, challenging existing models like Ethereum's L2 scaling and setting a new standard for decentralized networks.