State Fragmentation

Phenomenon

State Fragmentation refers to the distribution of a blockchain’s overall state across multiple shards, layers, or independent chains, rather than maintaining a single, monolithic ledger. This phenomenon arises as a scaling solution, allowing parallel processing of transactions and increasing network throughput. However, it introduces complexities related to cross-shard communication and maintaining a coherent global state. It represents a trade-off between scalability and atomicity. This architectural choice impacts data accessibility and integrity.