How Will Ethereum Scale?

[Crestie C. Tuvilla]

Like other public blockchains, ethereum intends to support as many users as it can.

The problem is that, today, we don't really know the limits of the platform.

Because of a hard-coded limit on computation per block, the ethereum blockchain currently supports roughly 15 transactions per second compared to, say, the 45,000 processed by Visa.

This limitation of ethereum and other blockchain systems has long been the subject of discussion by developers and academics.

While ethereum developers might like to highlight how the flexible smart contract platform differs from bitcoin, for example, it isn't unique in regards to scalability.

As disappointing as that might sound, there's hope in proposed solutions that haven't made it into the official software yet.