Efforts to scale ethereum, the world's second-largest blockchain, are growing more varied as one much-anticipated solution encounters pitfalls amid its continued development.
At the forefront of this transition has been plasma, a concept widely heralded as ethereum's best bet for short-term scaling. Already, researchers behind the tech have built five distinct versions of the protocol – but within these multiple iterations, there's evidence that work isn't proceeding as originally hoped, with little actionable code being put together well over a year since its inception.
As plasma slows, however, attention is being drawn to zk-snarks – a form of cryptography pioneered by privacy-centric cryptocurrency zcash – as another path forward. In fact, startups are already embracing the tech, which allows developers to aggregate transactions into batches, as they look to scale the network amid other efforts to expand, upgrade and grow ethereum.