But a new solution called Plasma, unveiled Wednesday, is quickly emerging as perhaps the project to watch.
That's because its authors – Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Poon – have blockchain resumes that are hard to beat. Not only is Buterin the creator of ethereum, but Poon co-authored the Lightning Network white paper, which set the roadmap for the technology widely touted as bitcoin's best shot for increasing its number of users.
Together, the two are a powerhouse pair to have working on a scalability project.
Poon told CoinDesk:
"People say you can't run everything in the world on the blockchain, but I really, really think it's possible."
He believes wholeheartedly in ethereum's mission of becoming a world computer that "replaces server farms," and has no doubt that its scaling hurdles will be overcome.
"This decentralized application stuff has looked like hype to really technical people, because there wasn't a clear trajectory and a path showing how it's achievable," Poon said.
But now, with Plasma, he believes there is.
Baby blockchains
The short version of the scalability problem is this: To check ethereum's history, users need to keep a copy of the entire blockchain, their own complete record of the history of transactions and computations. But, a "world computer" would need a huge trove of data, one most users clearly wouldn't be able to store on devices today.
As such, ethereum and other public blockchains are looking for ways to reduce the amount of data that's stored directly on the chain.
Plasma looks to accomplish this through the use of many, baby blockchains.
The system connects "child" blockchains to the "main" blockchain with something called "fraud proofs." It's similar to the Lightning Network, an idea Poon put forth a couple years ago for bitcoin, in that it's a top-layer interacting with a core blockchain below.
While the Lightning Network was limited to work strictly for payments, Plasma extends the idea to more complex computations, like ethereum smart contracts.
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-lightning-buterin-poon-unveil-plasma-scaling-plan/