Node Scalability

Definition ∞ Node Scalability refers to a network’s capacity to support an increasing number of participant nodes without performance degradation. This characteristic indicates how effectively a blockchain or distributed system can accommodate more validating or participating nodes while maintaining transaction throughput and decentralization. It addresses the challenges of data synchronization, consensus overhead, and network communication as the number of nodes grows. Achieving high node scalability is crucial for robust and resilient decentralized networks.
Context ∞ The discourse on Node Scalability frequently concerns the technical hurdles of maintaining decentralization while processing a large volume of transactions. A key debate involves balancing the computational and storage requirements for individual nodes against the desire for broad participation. Monitoring advancements in sharding, light clients, and state compression techniques offers valuable insight.