J* E* C* N* U* N* S* ›› 2026, Vol. 2026 ›› Issue (5): 26-41.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1000-5641.2026.05.003

• Data Systems and Platforms • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Design and prospects of scalable blockchain architecture

Cheqing JIN*(), Qian ZHOU, Zhao ZHANG, Yanqin YANG   

  1. Engineering Research Center of Blockchain Data Management (Ministry of Education), School of Data Science and Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
  • Received:2026-07-01 Accepted:2026-08-27 Online:2026-09-25 Published:2026-09-12
  • Contact: Cheqing JIN E-mail:cqjin@dase.ecnu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Blockchain is a key technology for building trust infrastructure based on data and mathematics. With ever-deeper applications in economy, livelihood, and other fields, the number of users has expanded rapidly, and task logic has become increasingly complex. How to enhance the scalability of blockchain systems thus becomes critical. Traditional distributed database systems only need to handle fail-stop faults, whereas blockchain systems must tolerate Byzantine faults, which results in significantly lower execution performance. System architecture is critical for blockchain performance, and architectural innovation is particularly important for scalability. This paper reviews the impact of architectural evolution on blockchain scalability, conducts an in-depth analysis of trust relationships among nodes, and proposes a hierarchical hybrid sharding architecture that organizes and manages shards in a layered manner, significantly enhancing system scalability. Further improvements in blockchain scalability include trust mechanism design, modular design, hardware and software co-design, on-chain and off-chain coordination, and deep integration with artificial intelligence.

Key words: blockchain, scalability, architecture

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