Sharding is the process of dividing a blockchain into subsets called shards. The division into shards supports the blockchain in its performance and thus enables transactions to take place in parallel in all parts. To ensure that only a certain number of nodes are responsible for a shard, individual nodes of the blockchain are also divided into shards. Within the shard, the same processes regarding consensus subsequently take place as in the full blockchain.

The nodes responsible for a shard cannot validate transactions from other shards. The processes remain in the shard and are later merged into a common blockchain (for example, Ethereum or Bitcoin).