Crypto Academy Week 15 - Homework Post for Professor @alphafx : Scalability and Improvements Made and Still To Be Made

aneukpineung78 (71)in SteemitCryptoAcademy • 3 years ago

This is my homework post for Steemit Crypto Academy Season 2 Week 7 for Professor @alphafx’s lesson Scalability and Improvements Made and Still To Be Made.

Note : I performed this task on Windows 10 PC, Google Chrome browser and the needed extensions.

1a. A Transaction On The Binance Smart Chain

First I activated my MetaMask Wallet extension on Google Chrome. I had 0.0284 BNB along with 9.39 USDT in it.

I open the PancakeSwap webpage on https://pancakeswap.finance. And I clicked the [Connect] button on the upper right corner of the webpage.

I choosed MetaMask wallet.

I was connected. The [Connect] button was replaced by my MetaMask wallet address.

I wanted to do a swap. I needed to do it in [Trade] menu. I clicked on [Trade] menu on the left pane.

The [Trade] menu was actually a dropdown button, when I clicked on it a list of sub menu dropped, which consisted these four options : Exchange, Liquidity, LP Migration, V1 Liquidity (Old). Swapping has to be done in [Exchange].

I clicked the [Exchange] button.

I needed to be in the [Swap] segment. And that was the default page of the [Exchange] menu, so I was good. But as seen in the picture below, my MetaMask wallet had been connected to PancakeSwap, but it needed to be unlocked for further transaction. So I clicked on the [Unlock Wallet] button and choosed MetaMask.

When the wallet had been connected, the [Unlock Wallet] button turn to a grey unclickable button.

Now the wallet was unlocked, time to do the swap. I would swap some USDT to BTT. I needed to access my USDT token and approve it before I could do the swap. I did that by clicking the down-arrow button in the lower right corner of [From] segment. And choosed the USDT token.

Then I clicked on the [Select a currency] button on lower right corner of [To] segment and I typed BTT on the search box. When BTT appeared on the list, I choosed it.

Then came the time to fill in the amount. I could fill in the amount of USDT to see how much BTT I would get, or I could fill the amount of BTT I’d like to get and see how much USDT was needed. I swapped 2 USDT to BTT. And the I hit the [Approve USDT] button.

A wallet confirmation was requested, I hit [Confirm] button.

Transaction confirmed and was recorded on bscscan here.

The USDT token had been approved, came the time to execute the swap. So I hit the [Swap] button.

On the confirmation request popup box that appeared I hit the [Confirm Swap] button.

Another Wallet approval was needed. I clicked the [Confirm] button.

Transaction was a success and can be observed on bscscan on this page.

The Time It Needed To Complete A Transaction

The transaction took less than a minute to complete since it was submitted. As shown in the picture below. It was the matter of seconds.

1b. A Transaction On Tron Blockchain

For this task, I used the TronLink Wallet Chrome Extension to send some TRX to another TronLink wallet. So, first I needed to activate the TronLink Wallet Chrome Extension. When it was activated, I clicked on TRX.

On the next page I clicked send.

The I filled in the necessary information: the address to send the TRX to, amount to send, and the note (this was optional).

On the next page, it asked for confirmation. So I clicked the [Accept] button.

The transaction was send to blockchain. It was a success and can be observed on this page of tronscan.

The Time It Needed To Complete A Transaction

The transaction on Tron blockchain I did through the TronLink wallet took less than one minute to complete after I hit the confirmation button. I clikced the confirmatoin button that sent the transaction to blockchain on 12:26 UTC+7 (Western Indonesia Time), and completed as a success on 12:26:48 UTC+7.

2. Time Taken For Each Transaction To Be Verified

Each of both transactions took less than a minute to complete.

^{Transaction on BSC took less than a minute to complete from the submission.}

^{Transaction on Tron Blockchain also took less than a minute from the submission to completion.}

3. Comparison Of The Scalability And Speed Of The Two Against BTC

BTC blockchain has the lowest scalability and speed of all three. An article from towardsdatascience.com says that “Bitcoin processes 4.6 transactions per second.” (the article was dated January 30, 2019). Binance Smart chain has the highest scalability of all. The block verification of Binance Smart Chain and Tron Blockchain are both under 1 minute time, it is about 10 times of the speed BTC Blockchain needs. The table below helps us understanding the fact easier.

Binance Smart Chain and Tron Blockchain have both outperformed Bitcoin Blockchain in the matter of scalability and speed on block verification. Both have also outperformed Visa which does around 1700 TPS.

4. What I Think Can Be Done To Improve The Scalability Of These Three (BTC, Tron, Binance Smart Chain)

There are some suggestions on what to do to improve the scalability of the three chains. Amongst them are:

Batch Payments into One Transaction. The idea is putting some transactions into one, it will reduce the size of transaction record which can increase the number of Transaction Per Second (TPS). This way would not only increase TPS but will also lower the transaction fee. The problem is batching multiple wallet’s transactions together will put privacy at risk.
Different Consensus Mechanisms. The now popular high-performance blockchain projects like EOS uses this technic. EOS us what it calls dPoS (decentralized Proof of Stake). The problem is centralization. Although DPOS is partially centralized, DPOS blockchains are able to run faster than other traditional public blockchains.
CDN on the Blockchain Technology. It should help to increase the scalability and the speed of blockchain. CDN has succeeded in internet area, and maybe the technology could be adopted into blockchain and solve the blockchain scalability and speed problem.

The Cryptocurrency community has been working upon the problem of scalability, and their efforts can be devided into four aspects:

1st Layer (on-chain). This requires changes to be made onto the codebase of the actual blockchain.
2nd Layer (Off-Chain). This solution refers to secondary protocols built on top of the main blockchain where transactions are ‘off-loaded' from the main blockchain to save space and reduce network congestion.
Distributed Ledgers. Blockchain technology is a subset under the general Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) due to its distributed architecture.
Consensus Mechanism. The consencus mechanisms play important rule in determinating the scalability and speed of a blockchain.

Below is the infographic from an article on masterthecrypto.com.

^Source.

Conclusion

Along with the regulations and some other things, scalability and speed are also holding the blockchain technology from being adopted more widely and openly.

There have been many efforts to solve the scalability and speed issue of blockchains carried out by the blockchain community, which all come with their negative (“weakness”) sides as well. I think further researches and development is needed. Take, for example, the solution of putting some transactions into one, this might help with the TPS number, but the development on the privacy risk is strongly needed. The dPoS which was said to be helping the scalability problem, as to why EOS has gain it’s popularity, has the problem of centralization that could lead to cencorship that needs to be taken care of, the ability to increase the TPS number should be adopted and the problem with the cencorship should be solved.

Tron and BSC has been doing good by beating VISA on the TPS number. This proves that it is possible. BTC just need to find it’s way there.