Quadratic Communication Overhead

Definition ∞ Quadratic communication overhead describes a situation where the amount of data exchanged between participants in a distributed system grows proportionally to the square of the number of participants. This type of growth presents a significant scalability challenge, as communication requirements quickly become prohibitive for larger networks. It often limits the number of nodes that can efficiently participate in certain consensus protocols. Minimizing this overhead is a design priority.
Context ∞ Protocols exhibiting quadratic communication overhead face substantial limitations in achieving widespread decentralization and high transaction throughput. Much of the research in distributed systems and blockchain scalability focuses on designing algorithms that avoid or mitigate this issue. News about new consensus mechanisms often highlights how they address communication complexity to allow for larger, more efficient networks.