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Navigating Blockchain’s Twin Challenges: Scalability and Regulatory Compliance

Mohammed Abdul, Shezon Saleem·2024·Blockchains
DOI 10.3390/blockchains2030013
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Abstract

Blockchain technology promises transformative potential across diverse sectors, facilitating innovations in areas ranging from finance to healthcare. Despite its many promising applications, several barriers—including scalability challenges, regulatory complexities, and technical hurdles—limit its widespread adoption. This systematic literature review delves into scalability enhancements and explores the legal and regulatory landscapes impacting blockchain deployment in ten key sectors: IoT, healthcare, finance, education, social media, genomics, supply chain, vehicular networks, e-voting, and tourism. These sectors were selected based on their significant engagement with blockchain technology and their prominence in the analyzed literature. We examine key technological advancements such as Layer-2 techniques, sharding, consensus algorithm optimization, and rollups, and discuss their implications for throughput, latency, and compliance with regulatory standards such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The review details these technological and regulatory developments and discusses their broader implications for industry and academia, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary research and innovation. By identifying gaps in current research and suggesting future directions, this study serves as a roadmap for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to develop secure, scalable, and compliant blockchain systems. Our comprehensive examination provides valuable insights into enhancing the efficiency, security, and regulatory compliance of blockchain technology.

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  • Scalability remains a significant concern for DeSci organizations, particularly because many teams struggle to balance decentralization with the practical demands of governance, resource allocation, and technological constraints.

    “Scalability remains a significant concern for DeSci organizations, particularly because many teams struggle to balance decentralization with the practical demands of governance, resource allocation, and technological constraints (Mohammed Abdul, 2024).”

    From Exploring the decentralized science ecosystem: insights on organizational structures, technologies, and funding (2025) · cites this paper as Mohammed Abdul, 2024

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Metadata

Authors
Mohammed Abdul, S. S.
Affiliations
School of Business, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
Venue
Blockchains
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2024-07-21
Volume
2
Issue
3
Pages
265-298
ISSN
2813-5288
DOI
10.3390/blockchains2030013
Cited by
54
References
1
Language
en
Licence
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (vor)
Funders
Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship

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