IOTA 3.0 – Additional improvements
The coordinator is shut down and the IOTA network is fully decentralized. This topic collects the subsequent improvements to the protocol.

Sharding
IOTA nodes have an upper limit on transactions per second (TPS) they can process. Through a form of database partitioning (breaking a very large database into smaller ones) into more manageable segments (shards) each shard would contain a unique set of account balances and nodes would then be assigned to individual shards to validate transactions.

The goal is to increase transaction throughput by splitting the Tangle into more manageable segments. The trilemma will continue to exist within individual shards, but as soon as the network throughput exceeds the processing capacities of the nodes in a single shard, another shard will be formed dynamically (fluid sharding). Due to the novel very flexible sharding, theoretically infinite high transaction speeds are possible with IOTA.
More Details
Scaling IOTA Part 1 – A Primer on Sharding – Medium
Scaling IOTA Part 2 – Untangling the Tangle – Medium
A co-operative trust model – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Medium
Multiverse Consensus
The multiverse consensus is an alternative to the Fast Probabilistic Consensus, which will be introduced with Coordicide. The multiverse consensus is an idea of Hans Moog, one of the developers of the IOTA Foundation and has not yet been researched in detail.
Hans Moog describes his consensus in a single sentence:
“If we find an efficient way of ‘encoding’ our votes publicly in the tangle (in form of transactions) and allow nodes to reach consensus using a form of ‘virtual voting’, then this would make a lot of things much easier.”

According to Hans Moog the main advantages of the Multiverse Consensus are:
- Less “moving parts” and much easier to implement
- Orders of magnitude more secure
- Smaller message overhead
- No need for re-attachments and promotions
- Completely partition tolerant and resilient against large scale network splits
- Works in the IoT and mesh net environment
- Independent of the amount of “bad nodes” in the network
- Does not require a specific network topology
You can view Hans coding a version of his Multiverse Consensus. Especially the first 35 minutes are very interesting when he talks about problems of the Tangle in the past and how these will change.
More Details
A new “consensus”: The Tangle Multiverse – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Medium
Last Updated on 18. February 2021