Scalability

Scalability in crypto describes how well a blockchain copes with growing demand — more users, more transactions, more data — without fees spiking or confirmations slowing to a crawl. It is usually discussed alongside the blockchain trilemma, the trade-off between scalability, security and decentralisation: forcing every node to process more transactions per second raises the hardware cost of running a node, which concentrates the network in fewer hands. Approaches that improve scalability include Layer 2 rollups, sharding, larger or more efficient blocks, and moving execution off-chain while keeping final settlement on-chain. When you evaluate a chain's scalability claims, look at what was traded away — node requirements, finality, who can validate — not only at the headline throughput number.