Shardeum; EVM layer 1 blockchain with high throughput

by Arthur · February 10, 2023

Shardeum is a layer 1 EMV compliant blockchain with high throughput. Shardeum brings a network that uses sharding to provide a low-latency system where developers can build with less problems in terms of synchronization with EVM and be cheap to use.

Sharding is a process that breaks down or distributes the storage of data into smaller pockets of databases that are stored on multiple machines. The advantage of Sharding is that it allows scalability of a system where more data is stored in different nodes that can communicate with each other and faster.

Shardeum is designed to provide high throughput on EVM while maintaining a high level of decentralization.

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Features of Shardeum

As an EMV-compliant layer 1 chain, developers can create dApps on it using basic smart contract languages such as Solidity and Vyper. This breaks the barrier for applications to be built on it unlike projects, such as Aptos, which use newer languages such as. Another feature of Shardeum is its low transaction fee and high transactions per second (TPS) compared to Ethereum.

The design of Shardeum implements a consensus mechanism that combines proof of stake and proof of quorum. This combination creates an increased TPS, as mentioned above, as a new node joins the network.

While Proof of Stake is a system that ensures that validators have the minimum amount of effort to validate transactions, Proof of Quorum allows nodes to validate transactions independently using timestamps.

Once these transactions are validated, the information about the transaction is sent to all shards in the Shardeum network. Shards are groups of nodes assigned to validate transactions. They are initiated as systems to break down how transactions are validated, reduce congestion and speed up the process.

At the end of the validation of transactions on Shardeum, transactions are not confirmed at block level like in bitcoin blockchain which is affected by fixed block time and block size. Since transactions are settled at the transaction level in Shardeum, finality is fast and the amount of energy used is low.

All nodes in the Shardeum network are not required to store all data for all transactions, as is popular in previous blockchains. This allows validators to use lighter devices to create nodes and be part of the network.

It also uses an autoscaling and fairness algorithm that expands the capacity of the network depending on the number of transactions to be processed at a time. To prevent MEV, Shardeum also implements the FCFS procedure for all transactions processed in the network.

Statistics and roadmap for Shardeum

According to the website, Shardeum has 50 validation nodes that have a shard size of 5 nodes each; houses more than 45,000 smart contracts with over 100 projects deployed.

The project which has more than 540,000 accounts has processed over 1.5 million transactions, attracted over 300,000 community members, and was built with the EIP 2930 automation system which provides a access list into the network.

From 2017 to 2021, the Shardeum team was focused on developing the project and increasing TPS. In 2022, the first prototype was released, Alphanet 1.0 and 2.0 were launched, EIP2930 was initiated, and it was given a capacity of 100 TPS.

According to the team, the Betanet launch and mainnet launch are expected in 2023 with a minimum of 1280 minimum validators. The team also added that the attention in the future will also be on infrastructure such as DeFi, DEXes, DAOs; community (peer to peer) projects such as metaverse, NFTs, animal welfare, social media and play to earn; enterprises such as supply chain, automation and smart infrastructure; and academia which includes research from institutions around the world.

Tokenomics and the team behind Shardeum

Shardeum ($SHM) is the native token of the Shardeum blockchain. It has a maximum supply of 508 million and a distribution system that will release 51% of the token to validators as rewards, 18% to sales, 15% to the team, 11% to the foundation and 5% to the ecosystem

$SHM will be mined by validators and used as a reward for them as well. It will also act as a tool to pay gas fees, perform transfers and other upcoming activities in the ecosystem.

Nischal Shetty is co-founder of Shardeum. He is also the founder of WazirX, Crowdfire and a respected personality in the cryptocurrency industry in India. Next to him is his co-founder, Omar Syed, who has worked with NASA as a distributed systems architect for 30 years. He has also been involved with Yahoo, Raytheon and Zynga.