Gate Live AMA Recap – Shardeum

Project Introduction

Shardeum is the world’s first auto-scaling Layer 1 blockchain designed to address the scalability challenge while maintaining true decentralization. It ensures low transaction costs, high throughput, and provides fair access opportunities for validators and users. Shardeum is built for widespread real-world applications, achieving predictability and low cost of Gas fees through dynamic state sharding.

AMA Q&A

What is the core goal of Shardeum (SHM)?

Shardeum’s core goal is to make decentralization accessible to everyone. It is committed to solving the blockchain trilemma, i.e., achieving security and scalability without sacrificing decentralization.

Shardeum adopts dynamic state sharding, allowing the network to automatically scale - that is, as more nodes join, the network’s throughput (TPS) will automatically increase. At the same time, anyone with consumer-grade hardware and a moderate amount of staking can become a validator, achieving synchronous growth in scale and decentralization. We combine this architecture with a “blockless” transaction-level consensus mechanism (a “legal quorum proof” mechanism based on proof of stake), ensuring predictable gas fees, approximately $0.01, while providing all users with transaction finality within seconds.

Our goal is to build a Layer 1 blockchain with high inclusivity and low fees, allowing developers and the public to easily participate in decentralized networks without facing high barriers.

What is the long-term vision of Shardeum (SHM)?

The vision of Shardeum is to make blockchain as ubiquitous and invisible as the internet. With linear scalability and dynamic state sharding, Shardeum enables Web3 Mass adoption becomes possible.

Our goal is to create a decentralized, permissionless ecosystem that allows anyone, anywhere to transact, build, and participate at low cost and low barriers. We aim for Shardeum to be the preferred blockchain for daily high-frequency activities: micro-payments, in-game items, AI service calls, and even Web2 workloads intolerant of fee volatility. By achieving this goal, Shardeum will become the preferred platform for real-world Web3 applications (such as DeFi, gaming, AI services, or payments between smart devices).

Ultimately, we hope that Shardeum will become a blockchain that quietly supports billions of transactions daily, while maintaining the same decentralization and transparency as the Internet. We are not just developing a blockchain, but making decentralization simple and easy to access.

How is the token economic model of Shardeum designed?

The token economic model of Shardeum aims to achieve long-term sustainability and decentralization. SHM has a dynamic supply mechanism similar to Ethereum - tokens used to incentivize stakers will be newly minted, while approximately $0.01 low-cost Gas fees will be burned for each transaction.

The network will initially be operated by the foundation’s nodes to ensure security, and will gradually transition to a community-operated validator system through a mechanism of reward rotation and public sale of nodes.

What aspects reflect the value of Shardum (SHM)?

Value is reflected in four aspects:

• Automatic scaling ability: When most chains encounter peak traffic, Gas fees soar; while on Shardeum, simply adding nodes allows the network to expand. Cost stability is a stable and enduring advantage for applications that require cost predictability.
• Low validator cost: Only one laptop and 2,400 SHM tokens are required to run a node. A wider, geographically diverse validator structure allows more people to participate easily, helping to protect the long-term value of all holders and users.
• Real grassroots heat: Before the mainnet went live, we had processed 81 million transactions, attracted 1.4 million users, and 171,000 real entity validators - these are real users, not virtual validator keys.
• SHM as network fuel: It is used to pay Gas, secure the network through staking, and will play a role in future governance upgrades.

What are the expectations for Shardeum (SHM) in 2025?

The Shardeum team will open smart contract deployment to all developers in the third quarter of this year. At the same time, we are advancing multiple cooperation plans and ecological expansion activities to promote ecological construction before enabling smart contract functionality. Our expectations for 2025 include:

• A network pool consisting of thousands of global validators helps us achieve network expansion and maintain the original intention of ‘decentralization for all’.
• Millions of users using Shardeum do not need to pay more than $0.01 in Gas fees for their favorite Dapps;
• Shardeum becomes the gateway platform that is most accessible for the next generation of users to enter the Web3 world.

Shardeum Future Outlook

Shardeum is building a highly scalable and inclusive Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure that is expected to become a key bridge connecting Web2 and Web3. With dynamic state sharding and lightweight node mechanism, Shardeum will continue to optimize transaction performance and cost stability, attracting more developers and users to join its ecosystem. With the full opening of smart contract deployment functionality, Shardeum is expected to make breakthroughs in high-frequency application scenarios such as DeFi, games, and AI services, bringing a more equal and efficient blockchain experience to global users, and moving towards truly large-scale implementation.