# Scalability in Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency scalability is a measure of the ability of a digital currency network to handle an increased number of transactions. This is important for any cryptocurrency platform as it allows users to transact without having to worry about slow transaction times, high fees, and other issues that could prevent them from using the platform. A scalable cryptocurrency platform will be able to handle more transactions than one that isn’t as efficient or optimized.
There are several different factors which can contribute to how well a cryptocurrency system scales. These include the size and complexity of its blockchain, the number of nodes on its network, the speed at which new blocks are added into the chain, and the type of consensus algorithm being used by miners. All these things can have an impact on how quickly transactions can take place within a given network.
One way that developers attempt to improve scalability is by introducing off-chain solutions such as payment channels or sidechains that allow some transactions to occur outside of the main blockchain while still ensuring security and reliability for all users involved in those transactions. By removing some traffic from the main blockchain itself, this helps reduce congestion on it and consequently makes transacting much faster for everyone involved in those particular payments.
Another factor affecting scalability is block size limits – usually set by miners – which govern how large each block should be allowed before they get rejected by nodes on their respective networks. Increasing this limit too much may cause problems with storage space but reducing it too much might mean not enough data gets included in each block meaning fewer overall transactions per second (TPS). Careful balancing between both extremes needs to be done if optimal results are expected from scaling efforts made so far—such decisions must also depend on what kind of applications run atop proposed cryptocurrencies platforms since different types require different levels of throughputs depending upon usage scenarios (transactions/second).
Finally, another way developers try improving scalability involves making use technologies like sharding where instead dividing work among many computers like traditional mining pools do; shards divide up tasks among various specialized groups connected over decentralized networks thereby increasing efficiency dramatically when compared against single-node setups traditionally employed when mining Bitcoin & Ethereum amongst others!
