In the traditional blockchain network, Bitcoin processes only 7 transactions per second, and the gas fee of Ethereum soared to 1000 Gwei in the DeFi boom. Network congestion has become the core bottleneck restricting the development of Web3. The blockchain scaling solution improves transaction processing efficiency by more than 200% through multi-level technological innovation, completely changing the operating paradigm of distributed systems. How does this technology break through the single point bottleneck? And in which scenarios has it reshaped the global financial infrastructure?
Core technology architecture: from single chain to multi-dimensional expansion
The blockchain scaling solution is the core engine that breaks through performance limits, and its architecture includes three levels of innovation.
- Layer 2 Expansion Layer : Reduce mainnet pressure through off-chain processing. Optimism Rollup submits transactions to the mainchain in bulk through fraud proof mechanism, reducing transaction costs by 90% and increasing processing speed by 40 times. HashKey Exchange The launched HashKey Chain is based on OP Stack technology, with a testnet TPS of 400 and support for USDC cross-border transfer verification time reduced from 3 days to 2 hours. Zk-Rollups achieves real-time verification through zero-knowledge proof, such as zkSync Era supporting 3000 transactions per second, achieving both privacy protection and efficiency.
- Sharding technology layer : divides the network into multiple sub-chains for parallel processing. Polkadot's heterogeneous sharding design allows parallel chains to run independently. Relay chains achieve 3-second final determinism through the GRANDPA protocol, and cross-chain communication latency is reduced to 2 seconds. State sharding technology allows each node to maintain only part of the data. Solana's Tower BFT consensus mechanism is optimized through equity-weighted timeouts, and the transaction throughput reaches 50,000 transactions per second.
- Consensus Optimization Layer : PoS (Proof of Stake) replaces PoW (Proof of Work) to improve efficiency. After the Ethereum merger, energy consumption is reduced by 99%, validators pledge ETH to participate in consensus, and block generation time is shortened to 12 seconds. Solana's PoH (Proof of History) combined with Turbine protocol compresses block propagation time to 400 milliseconds, supporting high-frequency trading scenarios.
Compared with traditional architecture, the anti-censorship and scalability of the scaling solution are particularly outstanding. For example, Polygon achieves a performance of 7000 TPS of sidechain through the Plasma framework, which is dozens of times higher than the Ethereum main chain, while maintaining EVM compatibility.
Key application scenarios and industry practices
- Stablecoin cross-border transfer : HashKey Exchange , a licensed compliance platform in Hong Kong, has shortened the USDC transfer verification time from 3 days to 2 hours through Layer 2 Technology Implementation. In Q2 2024, it processed over 100,000 transactions and reduced compliance audit costs by 75%. Its load balancer integrates KYC/AML rule engine, and the risk transaction block rate reaches 99.9%.
- RWA asset cross-chain bridging : In the Hong Kong Ensemble sandbox project, sharding technology aggregates Polkadot/Cosmos cross-chain network liquidity, reducing the cross-chain settlement delay of real estate RWA tokens from 12 seconds to 2 seconds, and synchronizing 10% of data to regulatory nodes through traffic replication technology to meet compliance requirements.
- Liquidity management : Uniswap v3 obtains real-time USDC/ETH pool data through Optimism Rollup, combines TWAP algorithm to calculate the optimal exchange rate, and successfully intercepts flash loan attacks worth $20 million in 2024.
- Income Aggregation : Yearn Finance uses the SubQuery indexer to integrate interest rate data from multiple lending agreements, providing users with an automatic compound interest strategy and increasing fund utilization by 35%.
- NFT ownership verification : Art Blocks platform stores the casting, transaction, royalty and other data of each NFT through zk-Rollups, and users can verify the authenticity by scanning the code. In 2024, it will intercept more than 20,000 counterfeit NFTs and increase brand trust by 30%.
- Supply chain data collaboration : A luxury brand generates a unique DID (decentralized identity) for each product, and combines NFC chips with sharding technology to store production data, improving cross-border logistics clearance efficiency by 60%.
Despite the challenges faced by blockchain scaling solutions such as Quantum Computing resistance (such as NTRU algorithm) and cross-chain data synchronization, as a "performance accelerator" in the Web3 era, it is driving the transformation from "passive response" to "active optimization" in fields such as finance, art, and supply chain. With the popularity of AI-driven predictive scheduling and FPGA acceleration chips, this technology will further reconstruct the global network infrastructure and achieve a paradigm shift from "traffic management" to "value creation".