Tipping the Scales: Could Unit-e Finally Break Blockchain's Scalability Impasse?

Cointelegraph takes a look at the latest scalability developments and what they can bring to blockchain and crypto.

The brainchild of this group of tech professionals and leading American academics is called "Unite-e," a new cryptocurrency that aims to end the scalability issues plaguing both blockchain and cryptocurrencies alike.

"Scalability is difficult to tackle in part because there are so many moving parts in blockchain systems. The ideal design should have low storage, computation, and communication costs, all while guaranteeing security and decentralization. Any of these requirements alone can be challenging to optimize, and the combination of these requirements is legitimately a very difficult problem."I think two key factors make our project interesting: The first is that we are doing research at all levels of the stack, ranging from the network to consensus to economics, instead of focusing on just one area.

"I think scalability is a very important issue to solve if cryptocurrencies and blockchains more generally are going to gain traction. We're now at the point where there is demand for these technologies, but the growing pains are starting to be evident. So it's critical to explore scalability solutions. At the same time, it can be difficult to experiment with drastically new scalability solutions in already-existing systems due to technical and political inertia. Because of this, we felt there were some clear benefits to building a standalone system with the flexibility to try out different ideas. The hope is that these ideas can eventually benefit the whole community."

"Like the Lightning network, we are very focused on scalability. I think one key difference is that because we are starting from scratch, we have the freedom to completely rethink other parts of the blockchain that are difficult to change in more established systems. That being said, some of our research is quite related to scalability of the Lightning network, and payment channel networks in general."Some scalability challenges in payment channel networks haven't really come to a head yet, in part because adoption is still growing.

MIT professor says blockchain must increase scalabilityOn Jan. 21, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Silvio Micali became the latest U.S.-based academic to outline which major aspects of blockchain systems must be improved in order to maximize all the benefits that the technology entails.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Micali stated his view that security, decentralization and scalability are three core aspects of blockchain systems that must function simultaneously in order to deliver an inclusive and borderless economy.

In January, MIT Technology Review furthered its bullish stance in claiming that 2019 would be the year that blockchain systems would finally enjoy normalization and wider adoption.

The project is the fruit of a collaboration between IBM, Axonia and R3. If successful, the project would represent a considerable leap forward in both scalability and the potential scope of major blockchain projects.

In light of the historic attempts to overcome scalability issues, the DTCC's attempt to shift its TIW to the blockchain is especially ambitious due to the fact that it processes 98 percent of derivatives transactions worldwide.