$O(N)$ Complexity

Definition ∞ O(N) complexity describes algorithms where resource consumption scales linearly with input size. This means if the input data doubles, the computational time or memory usage also approximately doubles. Such performance is characteristic of operations that process each element of a dataset once. In blockchain contexts, this relates to how processing demands increase proportionally with transaction volume or data units.
Context ∞ Understanding O(N) complexity is vital for assessing the scalability of blockchain protocols and smart contracts, especially concerning transaction throughput and network capacity. Systems exhibiting higher orders of complexity beyond O(N) may experience significant performance degradation as user adoption or data volume grows. Developers and researchers frequently work to optimize algorithms to achieve O(N) or better performance for efficient digital asset management.