Ethereum Scalability

Ethereum is like a big, busy highway where all the cars (transactions) are trying to get through at the same time. Right now, it can only handle about 15-20 cars per second. That's not a lot, especially when you compare it to something like Visa, which can handle tens of thousands of cars per second.

This is a problem because:

More Cars, More Problems: As more people start using Ethereum, it's like more cars are getting on the highway. This leads to traffic jams (congestion), slower travel times, and higher toll fees (gas fees). Costly Tolls: Each car has to pay a toll fee (gas fee) to use the highway. When the highway is jammed, drivers often have to pay higher toll fees to get through faster. Bad Road Trip: The slow travel times and high toll fees can make for a bad road trip, especially for apps that need to make quick, frequent trips.

To fix these problems, some solutions are being developed:

Carpool Lanes (Layer 2 Solutions): These are like special lanes on top of the Ethereum highway that take cars off the main road, get them where they need to go, and then bring them back to the main road. Connext Network is one of these carpool lanes.

More Lanes (Sharding): This is like dividing the Ethereum highway into smaller lanes, each capable of handling its own cars.

Highway Upgrade (Ethereum 2.0): This is a major upgrade to the Ethereum highway that aims to handle more cars, among other things.

Bundling Cars (Rollups): These are carpool lanes that bundle multiple cars into one, reducing the load on the Ethereum highway.

We have looked at the overall picture that exists in the crypto space right now. But there is a topic that I want to bring to your attention. Which is the fragmentation problem. What is it?

When all the lanes become their own separate roads, it's not just hard on the cars, it's also inefficient. Cars might get stuck on a slow road when there's a faster one nearby, simply because they can't move between them. And for the drivers (users), it's confusing and frustrating to navigate this fragmented highway.

And even for this apparently difficult situation, there is a solution called Chain Abstraction. This is like building bridges between the different lanes (chains) on the highway. With Connext cars can easily move from one lane to another, no matter which highway (blockchain) they started on. This makes it easier for cars (transactions) to find the fastest, cheapest route, and it helps Ethereum and other highways handle more cars per second.