Communication Costs

Definition ∞ Communication costs in distributed systems, including blockchains, quantify the resources expended for data transmission between network participants. These costs encompass bandwidth usage, latency, and the computational overhead associated with sending and receiving information. Minimizing communication costs is crucial for enhancing network scalability and efficiency. It directly impacts the performance of decentralized applications.
Context ∞ The optimization of communication costs remains a persistent challenge in blockchain technology, especially with increasing transaction volumes and the expansion of decentralized networks. Innovations in sharding, layer-2 solutions, and data compression techniques aim to alleviate these expenses. Future advancements seek to drastically reduce the data transmission burden, thereby enabling more robust and responsive digital asset ecosystems.