It’s fair to say that blockchain technology is a bit slow. Let’s face it, Bitcoin’s theoretical limit is 3.3 to 7 transactions per second. For a store of value, with no other real utility, that’s probably fine, although the Lightning Network will help to increase that speed.

The real issue of scalability becomes obvious when you look at blockchains with utility, like NEO and Ethereum. When every smart contract is deployed directly on-chain, this can be more than taxing on a blockchain. Look at the way CryptoKitties nearly ground Ethereum to a halt, for example.

Trinity is to NEO what Raiden is to Ethereum, and both allow for transactions to be made off-chain with only the outcome of those transactions placed on-chain. This helps their related blockchains to scale to the increased system demand placed on them by an ever-increasing influx of new users and their accompanying transactions.

NEO has a block generation speed of 15-20 seconds and can process 1,000 transactions per second up to 10,000 transactions per second with optimization. Ethereum has a similar block generation speed of 14 seconds, however, its transactions per second speed is much slower at only 10 with a theoretical maximum of 30.

Neither of these come close to Visa’s peak capacity of around 56,000 transactions per second, and while blockchain technology isn’t as widely adopted as Visa’s yet, it soon will be. Herein lies the scalability issue that NEO and Ethereum must address.

Trinity and Raiden both use state channel technology to scale their related blockchains. Raiden claims that is can potentially enable over 1,000,000 transactions per second, which is a 9,999,900% increase.

Since both scaling solutions are built on state channel technology, it is safe to assume a similar percentage increase in transactions per second when NEO adopts Trinity, meaning NEO would be able to process an incredible 99,999,000 transactions per second, and ten times that with further optimization. Take that Visa!

It’s fair to say that scaling solutions are essential to the survival and increased adoption of blockchain technology. Networks like Trinity and Raiden are leading the way.