Sub Blocks Will Allow For Blazing Fast Transaction Confirmations On the Ergo blockchain.
What kinds of metrics define the potential of a blockchain? With the Ergo Platform, the blockchain has prioritized open source development, decentralization, and protocol security as the basis of a network for smart money. Within the industry however, we often hear a chorus of influencers touting the need for blazing fast transaction speeds (regularly referred to as TPS, or transactions per second).
Being the fastest blockchain was not the initial priority in the development of Ergo. Its builders deliberately took a measured approach to testing and designing a next generation eUTXO Proof of Work network with robust security features. The architecture of this blockchain was also constructed to be scalable and adaptable in order to satisfy the evolving needs of dApp designers, developers, and users.
Now that the framework has been time tested and the ecosystem is demonstrating accelerated dApp development and deployment, Ergo has begun to take significant strides in addressing the scalability of the blockchain. Ergo’s eUTXO model has already proven that it can process thousands of outputs in one transaction, but is there a way for the network to decrease the time between block confirmations? If Ergo could achieve this, the network could handle a significantly higher load and process even more transactions for an expanding user base.
Sub blocks are essentially block candidates with a much lower difficulty threshold than regular blocks. This means that sub blocks can be generated much faster than regular blocks. “If a [sub] block has 1/128th of a regular block’s difficulty, we could expect one [sub] block to be generated per second on average.” One second [sub] blocks. That is very fast.
This new innovation will be a separate protocol that can be utilized by dApps, thereby allowing them to use this tool if needed. The use of sub blocks relies on Ergo’s deployment of side chains. Through side chains, a dedicated chain can perform the specific task of processing sub blocks, thereby reducing network data/load and improving the efficiency of the blockchain. The application of side chains not only presents the opportunity to make the blockchain even faster, it also opens the gate to another revenue stream for miners.
