What is a sidechain?
Today blockchain is used in a variety of scenarios and is one of the most-sought platforms to create a project and start a business. Do you know that there are around 3.000 blockchain systems in the market? The number is constantly growing, because the need for these types of infrastructure is increasing day after day. An increase of demand means an increase of the importance of improving the performance of blockchain systems. That’s why sidechains were created. Read on if you want to know how they work.
What is a Sidechain?
A sidechain is a blockchain linked to another blockchain via a two-way peg protocol. It’s very useful if you need to move a value from one blockchain to another or vice versa. Due to the growing number of crypto users around the world, blockchain systems are required to become more and more performant. One of the most important requests users are making is to improve the way blockchains interoperate. If a user wants to move a digital value from one system to another, the operation should be done effortlessly.
Sidechain works to solve the scalability issues that have always been affecting the blockchain system. How? By creating smaller blockchains that operate to lighten the load of transaction processing.
How does a sidechain typically work?
A sidechain stems from a parental blockchain, usually called “main chain”. The relationship between main chain and sidechains is typically managed by a group of operators called “federation”. A federation decides when a user’s coin can be spent or not. Its members are chosen by the creators of the sidechain.
Are sidechains safe?
Are sidechains safe systems? The answer is: it depends, for sidechains lack enough mining capacity to ensure a safe processing, thus they may be vulnerable to hacking attacks. However, it must be remembered that each sidechain is independent from the others, and an eventual damage in that chain will not affect the main chain. And vice versa: if the main chain is damaged, the sidechain will keep on working.
As the need for blockchain systems keeps increasing, more and more people will resort to sidechains in order to improve the performance of said systems.
