According to an Ethereum (ETH) network and community analyst, this year’s major trend for the decentralised smart contract platform will be layer two scaling technologies. Proposed upgrades to the network include Plasma and the Raiden Network, amongst others.

It seems that the Ethereum Foundation are aware of the pressing need to scale the network using second layer techniques too. To aid the development of such upgrades, it has granted one of the most active groups of Ethereum developers, Parity Technologies, with $5 million.

It’s No Secret That Ethereum Needs to Scale Fast

Eric Conner, the host of the “Into the Ether” podcast and founder of Ethereum information portal, EthHub.io, Tweeted a prediction for ETH’s 2019 yesterday:

2019 is going to be the year of layer 2 scaling for Ethereum. — eric.eth (@econoar) January 6, 2019

Even more so than the Bitcoin network, the number two cryptocurrency by market capitalisation is in dire need of a workable scaling solution. This was highlighted perfectly in 2017 when the decentralised collectable game CryptoKitties received a sudden influx of users, causing the underlying network to almost grind to a halt.

The goal for the Ethereum network has always been to host decentralised applications that would have the potential to revolutionise just about every industry you can think of. However, its efficacy in doing so is severely limited by the fact that the network cannot even take a few thousand people trading images of digital cats on it.

Clearly, the Ethereum Foundation is well-aware of the need to scale the blockchain sooner rather than later. The few people willing to experiment with decentralised applications at present are migrating over to rival smart contract platform EOS at a startling rate. This shift to a more advanced platform will likely continue too, unless adequate solutions are created fast.

In an effort to push those working on scaling techniques harder, the Ethereum Foundation has just awarded a research grant. According to a blog post by the group, Parity Technologies will receive $5 million to aid their continued experimentation towards scaling and other upgrades to the network.

The post outlined why Parity Technologies had been chosen to be the recipient of the “scalability, usability and security grant”:

“For several years, Parity Technologies has been an invaluable member of the Ethereum ecosystem for their leadership in core development efforts, their Parity Ethereum client and more… By all metrics, Parity is a major technical contributor to the Ethereum project, and they’ve notably done so as a self-financed and open-sourced effort since their founding.”

The Ethereum Foundation went on to list the areas of research it is hoping will be benefited from by the injection of cash. These include: developing Casper, sharding, light clients, developer tools, audits, and infrastructure improvements.

There are big upgrades already planned for 2019 for Ethereum. These include the much-anticipated Constantinople hard fork scheduled later this month.

Related Reading: Parity Hack and the Impact on the Ethereum Blockchain

Featured Image from Shutterstock.