US academics say their shardy blockchain will be 10X faster than Visa

[Hydrogen]

US academics are working together to create a new and improved cryptocurrency in a bid to rival Bitcoin.

According to Bloomberg, professors from seven US colleges (including MIT, University of California, Standford University, and Berkely) are looking to create a digital currency capable of processing thousands of transactions a second without sacrificing the basic principle of decentralization.

The project is run by Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a non-profit organization established by academics with support from Pantera Capital Management LP to develop decentralized technologies.

Unit-e, the digital currency currently in the works, is the DTR’s first initiative.

Bitcoin’s problems
Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology’s processing capability is limited by an average block creation time of 10 minutes, and the block size limit. Despite various proposed and active solutions, Bitcoin’s transaction processing capacity is estimated to be between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second. In contrast, Ethereum is able to support 10 to 30 transactions per second.

Despite the emergence of many altcoins over the years, Bitcoin is credited with being the first digital currency and trustless peer-to-peer payment network. It’s built up somewhat of a cult following among anarchists, developers, and speculators but has failed to gain mainstream adoption.

Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital in San Francisco and a member of the DTR council, told Bloomberg:

The mainstream public is aware that these networks don’t scale. We are on the cusp of something where if this doesn’t scale relatively soon, it may be relegated to ideas that were nice but didn’t work in practice: more like 3D printing than the internet.

Conscious that they’re up against a complex issue, the academics working on Unit-e are leveraging new instruments for reaching consensus.

They are relying on sharding – a process used to ensure that each node will only hold a part of the data on the blockchain, and not the entire set of information – and new payment channel networks to increase speed.

Pramod Viswanath, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign working on the project, said:

Bitcoin has shown us that distributed trust is possible but it’s just not scaling at a dimension that could make it a truly global everyday money. It was a breakthrough that has the capacity to change human lives but that won’t happen unless the technology can be scaled up.

Unit-e is expected to launch in the second half of this year and its proponents hope it will be able to process as many as 10,000 transactions per second, which far surpasses Visa’s capability to process around 1,700.

https://www.itechnologyupdates.com/us-academics-say-their-shardy-blockchain-will-be-10x-faster-than-visa.html

....

Here we have yet another ambitious blockchain startup claiming to have solved the "scaling" issue!

Will their claims pan out in terms of producing a viable real world application with tangible advantages over existing infrastructure or platforms? We will see!

I haven't looked into "sharding processes" and have no idea what they are or whether they could conceivably be utilized to produce a crypto currency with a transaction per second rate superior to credit cards. The concept originates from a consortium of college professors which could give it a little more credibility than the average ICO being promoted by Floyd Mayweather. Its nice to see crypto may still has some excitement to offer.

They're claiming an upper theoretical limit of 10,000 transactions per second, we can see if it pans out.

[bitmover]

Their claiming an upper theoretical limit of 10,000 transactions per second, we can see if it pans out.

Personally, I think scalability became a marketing, just to make people invest in vaporware coins. Such as bch and nano.

Beating Visa in transactions is possible. But can it beat BTC in decentralization at the same time?

There is no reason to have a global cryptocurrency if it is centralized, owned by a company.

Additionally, being able to scale to 10k tps is not a reason to use it.

Let's suppose I created a website that allows to have 1 million users online simultaneously. Will you visit it?

[NeuroticFish]

Here we have yet another ambitious blockchain startup claiming to have solved the "scaling" issue!

Will their claims pan out in terms of producing a viable real world application with tangible advantages over existing infrastructure or platforms? We will see!

I don't mind at all. Let them try. If they succeed, maybe some things they find out can be useful for Bitcoin, altcoins or simply the science.

Let's see if/how will they manage to make it decentralized at 10k TPS and hopefully with not too big disk space and bandwidth requirements

[Linkkoin]

For years most of the cryptocurrency developers claim their coins/tokens will replace Bitcoin.
So far none did and it cannot be foreseeable. Although already we have many cryptocurrencies which beat BTC in many fields:
- the speed and price of transfers (XRP)
- functionality (ETH)
- privacy (XMR)
- level of protection (QRL, claiming to be quantum-hack resistant)

Yet none of the replaced BTC and will be unlikely to do so, because even most ground-breaking solutions simply cannot replace the reputation of Bitcoin. When you say cryptocurrency, most of the people first think of Bitcoin.
And as well, many of the solutions from different blockchains can be implemented in the future forks of BTC, as it is not a revolution, but evolution now.

[ShadowBits]

US academics are working together to create a new and improved cryptocurrency in a bid to rival Bitcoin.

According to Bloomberg, professors from seven US colleges (including MIT, University of California, Standford University, and Berkely) are looking to create a digital currency capable of processing thousands of transactions a second without sacrificing the basic principle of decentralization.

The project is run by Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a non-profit organization established by academics with support from Pantera Capital Management LP to develop decentralized technologies.

Unit-e, the digital currency currently in the works, is the DTR’s first initiative.

Bitcoin’s problems
Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology’s processing capability is limited by an average block creation time of 10 minutes, and the block size limit. Despite various proposed and active solutions, Bitcoin’s transaction processing capacity is estimated to be between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second. In contrast, Ethereum is able to support 10 to 30 transactions per second.

Despite the emergence of many altcoins over the years, Bitcoin is credited with being the first digital currency and trustless peer-to-peer payment network. It’s built up somewhat of a cult following among anarchists, developers, and speculators but has failed to gain mainstream adoption.

Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital in San Francisco and a member of the DTR council, told Bloomberg:

The mainstream public is aware that these networks don’t scale. We are on the cusp of something where if this doesn’t scale relatively soon, it may be relegated to ideas that were nice but didn’t work in practice: more like 3D printing than the internet.

Conscious that they’re up against a complex issue, the academics working on Unit-e are leveraging new instruments for reaching consensus.

They are relying on sharding – a process used to ensure that each node will only hold a part of the data on the blockchain, and not the entire set of information – and new payment channel networks to increase speed.

Pramod Viswanath, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign working on the project, said:

Bitcoin has shown us that distributed trust is possible but it’s just not scaling at a dimension that could make it a truly global everyday money. It was a breakthrough that has the capacity to change human lives but that won’t happen unless the technology can be scaled up.

Unit-e is expected to launch in the second half of this year and its proponents hope it will be able to process as many as 10,000 transactions per second, which far surpasses Visa’s capability to process around 1,700.

https://www.itechnologyupdates.com/us-academics-say-their-shardy-blockchain-will-be-10x-faster-than-visa.html

....

Here we have yet another ambitious blockchain startup claiming to have solved the "scaling" issue!

Will their claims pan out in terms of producing a viable real world application with tangible advantages over existing infrastructure or platforms? We will see!

I haven't looked into "sharding processes" and have no idea what they are or whether they could conceivably be utilized to produce a crypto currency with a transaction per second rate superior to credit cards. The concept originates from a consortium of college professors which could give it a little more credibility than the average ICO being promoted by Floyd Mayweather. Its nice to see crypto may still has some excitement to offer.

Their claiming an upper theoretical limit of 10,000 transactions per second, we can see if it pans out.

Of course it will be, but for now let us all rely on FIAT and other platforms to do the transferring while Blockchain isn't perfect for that job yet.

[mu_enrico]

The word "academics" sounds like they want to look smart. But in fact, after 10 years, many so-called professors and experts failed to create "better bitcoin."

I don't think POW blockchain can achieve that many TPS without a 2nd layer (i.e. lightning) or a side chain. Any other consensus cannot be superior to POW.

[avikz]

US academics are working together to create a new and improved cryptocurrency in a bid to rival Bitcoin.

According to Bloomberg, professors from seven US colleges (including MIT, University of California, Standford University, and Berkely) are looking to create a digital currency capable of processing thousands of transactions a second without sacrificing the basic principle of decentralization.

This is possible, both theoretically and practically, but what is the bottom line?? I know a lot of tokens are faster and more capable than bitcoin but are people using those tokens? No! If these so called "academics" are planning to confront with bitcoin, all will go down in shithole! However, the only chance of winning is to follow Ripple's route. Promote their coins to Banks and Transaction layer providers to use their network for daily transactions. But for open marker, if these academics are planning to list in crypto exchanges, the fate will be very similar to the other tokens.

[Naida_BR]

US academics are working together to create a new and improved cryptocurrency in a bid to rival Bitcoin.

According to Bloomberg, professors from seven US colleges (including MIT, University of California, Standford University, and Berkely) are looking to create a digital currency capable of processing thousands of transactions a second without sacrificing the basic principle of decentralization.

The project is run by Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a non-profit organization established by academics with support from Pantera Capital Management LP to develop decentralized technologies.

Unit-e, the digital currency currently in the works, is the DTR’s first initiative.

Bitcoin’s problems
Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology’s processing capability is limited by an average block creation time of 10 minutes, and the block size limit. Despite various proposed and active solutions, Bitcoin’s transaction processing capacity is estimated to be between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second. In contrast, Ethereum is able to support 10 to 30 transactions per second.

Despite the emergence of many altcoins over the years, Bitcoin is credited with being the first digital currency and trustless peer-to-peer payment network. It’s built up somewhat of a cult following among anarchists, developers, and speculators but has failed to gain mainstream adoption.

Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital in San Francisco and a member of the DTR council, told Bloomberg:

The mainstream public is aware that these networks don’t scale. We are on the cusp of something where if this doesn’t scale relatively soon, it may be relegated to ideas that were nice but didn’t work in practice: more like 3D printing than the internet.

Conscious that they’re up against a complex issue, the academics working on Unit-e are leveraging new instruments for reaching consensus.

They are relying on sharding – a process used to ensure that each node will only hold a part of the data on the blockchain, and not the entire set of information – and new payment channel networks to increase speed.

Pramod Viswanath, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign working on the project, said:

Bitcoin has shown us that distributed trust is possible but it’s just not scaling at a dimension that could make it a truly global everyday money. It was a breakthrough that has the capacity to change human lives but that won’t happen unless the technology can be scaled up.

Unit-e is expected to launch in the second half of this year and its proponents hope it will be able to process as many as 10,000 transactions per second, which far surpasses Visa’s capability to process around 1,700.

https://www.itechnologyupdates.com/us-academics-say-their-shardy-blockchain-will-be-10x-faster-than-visa.html

....

Here we have yet another ambitious blockchain startup claiming to have solved the "scaling" issue!

Will their claims pan out in terms of producing a viable real world application with tangible advantages over existing infrastructure or platforms? We will see!

I haven't looked into "sharding processes" and have no idea what they are or whether they could conceivably be utilized to produce a crypto currency with a transaction per second rate superior to credit cards. The concept originates from a consortium of college professors which could give it a little more credibility than the average ICO being promoted by Floyd Mayweather. Its nice to see crypto may still has some excitement to offer.

They're claiming an upper theoretical limit of 10,000 transactions per second, we can see if it pans out.

It is very boring to see that all the new problems now try to solve scalability like this is the one problem that already developed chains face. It is like they only try to attract people's eyes in order to get some funds for their investments. Sharding is already a technology that it is used in many projects that they are in Top100 (i think one of them is Ziliqa)

[exstasie]

Here we have yet another ambitious blockchain startup claiming to have solved the "scaling" issue!

Will their claims pan out in terms of producing a viable real world application with tangible advantages over existing infrastructure or platforms? We will see!

I haven't looked into "sharding processes" and have no idea what they are or whether they could conceivably be utilized to produce a crypto currency with a transaction per second rate superior to credit cards.

Sharding and state channels (like the Lightning Network) are basically the two main schools of thought on exponential scaling. Sharding probably appeals more to those who prefer an on-chain approach to scaling, so marketing-wise I think it has a lot of appeal. The jury is out on how secure sharded protocols will be because they effectively reduce nodes to partially validating (nodes are only concerned with certain parts of the consensus which affect them). For that reason, I prefer off-chain approaches like Lightning, but it's totally possible that sharding works out great.

[Pab]

Very interesting
There is SkyNet virtual blockchain chip and his network coming
It will be mostly used to AI You can read about it here https://skynet.co/
Any blockchain can be integrated with SkyNet so it could be interesting
I know that Master Card won patent on cards blockchain
It will make transaction faster and more secure
It will be private blockchain
But if MIT is working on something than it is worth attention

[el kaka22]

At this point anything is an improvement on VISA to be honest. All these places like visa, mastercard, hsbc, western union and whatever that allows you to send and receive money from all over the world are both insanely expensive compared to bitcoin and crypto but also quite slow as well.

The technology that we have is already fast and of course anything faster is also quite welcomed but lets not forget these are billions of dollar worth companies and I doubt they will just sit back and watch us find a way to send and receive money from anywhere in the world for fraction of the time and money while they go bankrupt for not innovating.

They will eventually come to realization that if nothing else, crypto will be a way people use to send and receive money in bulk. Huge companies that send and receive products from all kinds of companies (think of chinese manufacturer that makes stuff and sends oversees) will start to accept bitcoin and it will be cheaper.

[dothebeats]

Yea right, coming from the same mouths who mentioned back then that bitcoin and blockchain is nothing but mere tools for money laundering and really no technological advancement involved in its creation. I don't quite get the idea of a shardy blockchain yet, but it could potentially offer something for payment networks, and yes, anything other than what Visa currently offers is an upgrade, really, though we can't deny the fact that it's still doing its thing even after a couple of decades now. Scalability sure is one thing that needs addressing should the world go fully-digital, and it will certainly attract innovations that could potentially lead to more solutions to a problem, so I guess it's a win-win for everyone.

[ToyotaFortuner]

The US academy seems to have just realized that blockchain technology can be faster than a visa and with blockchain technology security transactions can be safer to use and more efficient, they should have used this technology for a long time.

[hugeblack]

The scalability is essentially in line with the concept of decentralization. I can handle more than 1,000 transactions per second, but this means that I need too many confirmation to ensure decentralization.
offline transactions seem to be a good solution to this problem, and if successful, Bitcoin will accelerate ideally since it enjoys universality with a good degree of privacy.

Creating more altcoins with purely economic concepts is an attempt to scam and manipulate prices.

[wxa7115]

Their claiming an upper theoretical limit of 10,000 transactions per second, we can see if it pans out.

Personally, I think scalability became a marketing, just to make people invest in vaporware coins. Such as bch and nano.

Beating Visa in transactions is possible. But can it beat BTC in decentralization at the same time?

There is no reason to have a global cryptocurrency if it is centralized, owned by a company.

Additionally, being able to scale to 10k tps is not a reason to use it.

Let's suppose I created a website that allows to have 1 million users online simultaneously. Will you visit it?

And not only that is this project or any project that argues that can solve the scaling issue open source or it is closed source? If it is open source then everyone can get behind it if it really solves the issues with scaling but if it does and it is closed source then I will not touch it at all and I know I am not the only one since we will not know if they have hidden something in the code that could work to their benefit or the benefit of a third party.

I also agree that the issues with scaling are becoming a marketing scheme similar to what we saw in the past with every coin naming themselves bitcoin 2.0 or the huge amount of bitcoin forks we saw after segwit was activated and claiming they were the real bitcoin.

[Naida_BR]

I have gotten tired reading about every project that comes out and saying that they have solved scalability. I think nowadays is something like a marketing technique to attract investors' attention. I can't see any reason that sharding is an innovative approach to solve this issue. There are already some projects that have implemented sharding as a way of solving scalability (I think Ziliqa is one).

[Tylev]

This is very good if scientists from various higher educational institutions are connected to the creation of cryptocurrencies with improved characteristics. It will only be to the benefit of cryptocurrency development. If they create their Unit-e, which will do a thousand transactions per second and be completely decentralized, let them do it. The main thing is that the cryptocurrency develops and improves in its functions.