{"id":17080,"date":"2021-04-09T19:31:02","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T19:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci0280355cb0032558"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:04:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:04:51","slug":"scaling-bitcoin-with-the-erlay-protocol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/scaling-bitcoin-with-the-erlay-protocol","title":{"rendered":"Scaling Bitcoin With The Erlay Protocol"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Gq6vRnJnbBM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Scaling Bitcoin With The Erlay Protocol - The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado 34 - Bitcoin Magazine\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gq6vRnJnbBM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Gq6vRnJnbBM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch This Episode On YouTube<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Listen To This Episode:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-van-wirdum-sjorsnado-the-technical-side-of-bitcoin\/id1532957243#episodeGuid=e6699257-c03e-4733-8236-3a53a800f545\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/1lk03W0VhFafXDDGXY9XmL?si=rZq2k13jQOKKpObtfwlYHg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9uYWRvYnRjLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz\/episode\/ZTY2OTkyNTctYzAzZS00NzMzLTgyMzYtM2E1M2E4MDBmNTQ1?sa=X&amp;ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwjotNCLwvHvAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Libsyn<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/+jXsQfGHAQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Overcast<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In this episode of \u201cThe Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,\u201d hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed the Erlay protocol. Erlay is a proposal to reduce the bandwidth required to run a Bitcoin node, which has been proposed and developed by University of British Columbia researchers Gleb Naumenko, Alexandra Fedorova and Ivan Beschastnikh; Blockstream engineer Pieter Wuille; and independent Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin nodes use bandwidth to receive and transmit both block data as well as transaction data. Reducing the amount of bandwidth a node requires to do this would make it cheaper to run a node. Alternatively, it allows nodes to connect to more peers without increasing its bandwidth usage.<\/p>\n<p>In the episode, van Wirdum and Provoost explained that Erlay uses set reconciliation to reduce the amount of data nodes need to share transactions. More specifically, Erlay uses a mathematical trick called Minisketch. This solution is based on pre-existing mathematical formulas used in biometrics technology.<\/p>\n<p>Van Wirdum and Provoost outlined how this trick is applied in the context of Bitcoin to let different nodes sync their mempools: the sets of transactions they\u2019ve received in anticipation of a new block, or, in the case of a miner, to include in a new block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode of \u201cThe Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,\u201d the hosts discussed the Erlay protocol, scaling Bitcoin and Minisketch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":15620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1788,1367,543],"class_list":{"0":"post-17080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-erlay","9":"tag-van-wirdum-sjorsnado","10":"tag-video"},"author_data":{"id":2520,"name":"Bitcoin Magazine","nicename":"bitcoin-magazine","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/bitcoin-magazine-logo.jpeg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/van-wirdum-sjorsnado.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}