Sharding is a database architecture technique that results in horizontal partitioning of data contained in a database. It is the practice of separating one table’s rows into multiple different tables, known as partitions.

In Blockchain, sharding is used to increase transaction speed by splitting Blockchain into small sections called as Shards. Each Shard will have its own set of account balances and smart contracts. Each node will have only a part of data on the Blockchain and not entire information. Zilliqa is the first public blockchain to implement sharding.