Delphi Digital released research on Ethereum's technical challenges. The firm examined four areas: blockchain growth, Infura's centralization, cross-shard communication, and code vulnerabilities. The
Delphi Digital released research on Ethereum's technical challenges. The firm examined four areas: blockchain growth, Infura's centralization, cross-shard communication, and code vulnerabilities. The researchers don't claim the list is complete.
1. Blockchain Size
Ethereum's blockchain has reached 188 GB for a full node and 2.12 TB for archival storage. Bitcoin's chain spans 200 GB, despite operating for ten years versus Ethereum's four. Node operators face rising costs as blockchains expand. "The larger the blockchain grows the more difficult it becomes to independently run a node, which hurts decentralization," Delphi Digital states.
Developers have proposed state rent and storage pruning as near-term fixes. Ethereum 2.0's sharding feature would address the problem long-term by dividing the network across multiple chains.
2. Infura Centralization
Infura has become essential infrastructure for Ethereum. The service processes 10 billion requests each day and serves more than 50,000 dapps and developers. Infura handles 5 to 10 percent of all Ethereum nodes.
This concentration creates a single point of failure. If Infura shut down, hundreds of applications would stop working. Michael Wuehler, Infura's co-founder, told CoinDesk: "If every single dapp in the world is pointed to Infura, and we decided to turn that off, then we could, and the dapps would stop working. That's the concern and that's a valid concern."
3. Cross-Shard Communication
Ethereum's scaling strategy depends on sharding. But developers face a communication problem between shards. Two smart contracts on different shards—the spec allows for up to 1,024—could run functions in parallel. Getting them to interact is the challenge.
Delphi Digital reviewed six proposals to solve the issue. The firm found all of them inefficient. Solving this problem is critical for Ethereum's future.
4. Code Vulnerabilities
Code vulnerabilities pose the final major risk. Ethereum has seen this problem manifest several times: the DAO hack, the Parity multisig bug, and the delayed Constantinople upgrade.
The report traces these failures to Solidity's limitations and the added complexity of being Turing-complete.
