‘Scale or fail’: RLNC technology can boost Web3 adoption — MIT Professor

After 15 years of probe astatine the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is acceptable for commercialization successful the Web3 industry, according to Muriel Médard, an MIT prof and laminitis of blockchain infrastructure developer Optimum.

Optimum emerged from stealth connected Feb. 28 arsenic a decentralized representation infrastructure that tin beryllium utilized by immoderate blockchain seeking to bring scalability to Web3. It utilizes the RLNC exertion that was archetypal formulated by Professor Médard. 

RLNC is simply a breakthrough successful coding that is already utilized successful the 5G, outer telecommunications and Internet of Things (IoT) industries. 

In an interrogation with Cointelegraph, Professor Médard said RLNC is equivalent to “breaking a puzzle into tiny pieces, mixing those pieces unneurotic into equations, and sending them to your friends.”

“Even if a fewer pieces get lost, your friends tin inactive enactment the full puzzle unneurotic from the pieces they receive. Rather than look for circumstantial pieces, you look for conscionable capable pieces,” she said.

RLNC exertion tin assistance blockchains flooded “critical bottlenecks successful scalability” by “encoding information into mathematical equations, enabling faster transmission, reduced bandwidth usage, little barriers to introduction for flexnodes and much reliable delivery,” said Médard.

Médard co-founded Optimum with Nancy Lynch, an advisor and co-inventor of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus, aft “several years of witnessing the emergence and maturation of Web3,” she said.

“[The] imaginativeness is to bring the ratio of accepted machine representation (RAM) to decentralized networks, laying the instauration for a breakthrough successful Web3 infrastructure.”

Related: The aboriginal of Ethereum scaling lies successful hardware, not software

“Scale oregon Fail”

RLNC’s imaginable usage lawsuit successful Web3 has attracted notable backers, respective of whom invested successful Optimum arsenic angel investors. They see Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Wormhole co-founder Robinson Burkey, Polychain main exertion serviceman Abhijeet Mahagaonkar, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and Arthur Cheong, the laminitis and CEO of DeFiance Capital.

Professor Médard told Cointelegraph that scalability breakthroughs successful Web3 are needed, particularly arsenic blockchain adoption continues to turn for the “purposes of payments, fiscal instruments and adjacent diversification of nationalist authorities strategies.”

“We judge this inclination volition continue, and arsenic usage and request increase, blockchains volition request to standard oregon they volition fail,” she said. 

Scalability remains 1 of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks, having plagued the improvement of some Bitcoin and Ethereum astatine assorted points implicit their history. Competing networks person vowed to fix scalability issues stemming from wide user adoption, though their track record has been acold from perfect. 

Against this backdrop, the crypto payments scenery has evolved importantly successful caller years, shifting from tokens to stablecoins that are overmuch faster and cheaper. 

Stablecoins person emerged arsenic 1 of blockchain’s astir fashionable usage cases, particularly for payments and cross-border remittances. Source: DefiLlama

An August study by wealthiness manager Bernstein said Solana is simply a starring web for stablecoin adoption, but adjacent it struggles to standard with increasing outgo and remittance demand.

Although Solana has piloted stablecoin payments with Visa and Shopify, it’s unclear whether the blockchain tin facilitate mainstream adoption without a monolithic boost successful capacity, Bernstein said. 

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