A number of projects introduced potential scaling solutions prior to Reddit’s July 31 deadline. Most contest participants are existing developers of Layer 2 solutions for Ethereum. The majority of entrants seem to have tweaked their existing technologies to accommodate Reddit’s demands.

The terms of the challenge stipulate that proposed technologies should be able to handle “100,000 point claims, 25,000 subscriptions, 75,000 one-off point burns and 100,000 transfers” spanning a five-day period. 

Each of these would be a separate type of transaction, equivalent to a transaction-per-second rate of just 0.69. However, since they are calls to smart contracts and token transfers, they may result in a much more significant gas usage than just Ether (ETH) transactions. Reddit’s challenge focuses heavily on the cost of the system.

Aztec proposes a private Zk-Rollup

Aztec, an Ethereum-based privacy protocol based on heavily updated zk-SNARK cryptography, proposed a hybrid privacy and scaling solution.

Unlike its competitors, Aztec’s zkReddit makes all the token transactions private on the Ethereum blockchain, though Reddit itself will know how many tokens are in circulation. The current proof of concept achieves a 3.2 TPS rate with an average 27,500 gas for each transaction. This rate is slightly higher than the cost of sending Ether normally.

Constructing a transaction can take as much as 40 seconds and require up to 3 minutes to finalize. The project promised that its performance would be vastly improved with further iterations.

OMG Network hints at Plasma

OMG Network, previously known as OmiseGo, proposed Plasma side chains as a scaling solution.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, OMG’s More Viable Plasma resolves some of the trust issues in previous iterations by using the concept of “trust by default” from Optimistic Rollups. 

For the challenge, the team built a Chrome extension to interface with Reddit’s Community Points. The interface connects users to the Plasma network and provides a number of usability abstractions, like automatically extracting relevant wallet addresses.

Skale proposes a decentralized cloud computing platform

Skale’s proposal involves its high-performance blockchain network, which is primarily designed for cloud computing. Unlike other systems, there are no direct transaction fees on the network. Instead, DApp developers would pay for resource usage directly through a pre-paid balance system, similar to cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services.

Reddit would have to create its own blockchain on the Skale network and re-implement their Community Points logic. This would cost from approximately $350 to $44,000, depending on the size of the chain. The system is based on the Ethereum 1.0 architecture and maintains cross-blockchain capability with the mainnet. 

Everest proposes its blockchain as a second layer

The Everest project proposed a proof-of-concept that relies on its EverChain blockchain to process transactions.

Transacting with Reddit tokens would be free on the EverChain network, which the team compared to the $0.40 each transaction would cost on mainnet. Transactions would be relayed from the Ethereum mainnet to EverChain through a set of oracles, recording the data on mainnet through an Ethereum Name Service-based storage system.

The project also suggested that subscriptions, biometrics, and document-based identification could be done through the platform.