How can the ‘Theory of Constraints’ help scale the performance of your Blockchain to support 1 trillion devices?
Is it really true that Blockchains & DLTs could never scale to billions of devices?
?Many observers of Bitcoin focus on its supposed lack of performance and go onto say that a world trading and negotiating autonomously with each other in a peer-to-peer basis is simply impossible when you have some 50 billion IoT devices by 2020 forecast by Cisco and 1 trillion devices forecast by ARM Holdings by 2035.
What is the ‘Theory of Constraints’?
The theory of constraints (TOC) is a powerful management concept introduced by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his 1984 book titled ‘The Goal’. Goldratt’s key insight was that although there may be thousands of factors influencing performance in a ‘complex system’, typically the overall performance of that system is held back by a very small number of constraints (sometimes just one!).
So how does this apply to Bitcoin and similar (POW) Blockchains?
Many, perhaps ill-informed, commentators on Bitcoin like to point out its so called ‘slow performance’ and low throughput. In Bitcoin’s case and similar Blockchains that use a Proof-of-Work (POW) consensus algorithm, the overall speed and performance of the overall Bitcoin network is held back by its deliberate consensus algorithm design and specifically the decision to write just one block every ten minutes of a limited block size. This design decision effectively determines the speed and throughput of the Bitcoin blockchain.
To go faster, then focus on overcoming the limiting constraint
The beauty of Goldratt’s TOC concept, is that by overcoming the key constraint, one can readily achieve much higher performance levels. There are a variety of design decisions that you can make to improve performance. There are a number of approaches you can take in order to perform much faster such as RadixDLT, or ‘the tangle’ approach used by IOTA using a ‘DAG’ (directed acyclic graph).
Railz designed to support 1 trillion Robots and IoT devices
On the Railz protocol, we have set out to enable IoT devices (that ARM forecast will reach to over 1 trillion devices by 2035) to be able to carry out machine-to-machine negotiated consensus at scale. And we raise a glass in Elliot Goldratt’s memory for helping point us in the right direction to reach our objective to facilitate trading and negotiation across billions of devices.
Posting about farming, sustainability and teambuilding resilience systems. And helping organisations to build Natural Productivity by offering engaging learning programmes and retreats on our beautiful farm in England.
6 年TOC or constraints management works is probably one of the most effective management tools that i have come across. We have made huge improvements in our farming operations by using this focusing tool. And I am really interested to read here how effective it is on the forefront of technology. #TOC
Founder & CEO Powerhedron, Founder & ex-CEO BCB Group
6 年Blockchain meets IoT meets AI. Throw in a VR experience and it is a complete picture of our times. Interesting work, will be following closely.