TY - GEN
T1 - A Survey on On-Chain-Off-Chain Scalability in Blockchain
AU - Chiedu, Chiedu Charles
AU - Gai, Keke
AU - Wei, Yihang
AU - Ding, Kai
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 IEEE.
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - Blockchain technology, providing security, trust, and transparency for a variety of applications, has become a revolutionary force in decentralized systems. However, scalability continues to be a major obstacle, restricting its use in large-scale and high-throughput settings. To assess the trade-offs between decentralization, security, and computing efficiency, our survey provides a thorough examination of both on-chain and off-chain scalability options, such as sharding, adaptive block sizing, rollups, state channels, and sidechains. Layered protocols (Layer 1 and Layer 2) are also discussed in terms of scalability and interoperability. By combining on-chain, off-chain, and modular blockchain designs, this work investigates new hybrid models, multi-layer architectures, and cross-chain scalability mechanisms in addition to conventional solutions. By identifying critical gaps and challenges in existing approaches, this survey provides a roadmap for future research in scalable, secure, and interoperable blockchain infrastructures, with applications in decentralized finance, IoT, and cross-border transactions.
AB - Blockchain technology, providing security, trust, and transparency for a variety of applications, has become a revolutionary force in decentralized systems. However, scalability continues to be a major obstacle, restricting its use in large-scale and high-throughput settings. To assess the trade-offs between decentralization, security, and computing efficiency, our survey provides a thorough examination of both on-chain and off-chain scalability options, such as sharding, adaptive block sizing, rollups, state channels, and sidechains. Layered protocols (Layer 1 and Layer 2) are also discussed in terms of scalability and interoperability. By combining on-chain, off-chain, and modular blockchain designs, this work investigates new hybrid models, multi-layer architectures, and cross-chain scalability mechanisms in addition to conventional solutions. By identifying critical gaps and challenges in existing approaches, this survey provides a roadmap for future research in scalable, secure, and interoperable blockchain infrastructures, with applications in decentralized finance, IoT, and cross-border transactions.
KW - Blockchain
KW - interoperability
KW - multi-layer
KW - off-chain
KW - on-chain
KW - scalability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105007536835&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/BigDataSecurity66063.2025.00011
DO - 10.1109/BigDataSecurity66063.2025.00011
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105007536835
T3 - Proceedings - 2025 IEEE 11th Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud, BigDataSecurity 2025
SP - 71
EP - 82
BT - Proceedings - 2025 IEEE 11th Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud, BigDataSecurity 2025
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 11th IEEE International Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud, BigDataSecurity 2025
Y2 - 9 May 2025 through 11 May 2025
ER -