Sharding is defined as the process of breaking up a large quantity of information into smaller pieces and distributing it to multiple computers. Sharding is often used to make the data or computer program more manageable.
Shard comes from an Old English word that meant, “to cut” and in present time, a shard is a small piece of a bigger whole.
By sharding a massive computer program, you can reduce the computer requirements and make a large program more manageable. In other words, with sharding, smaller portable computers can run what used to require a larger, more powerful, and expensive computer.
In blockchain technology, the files are often over 100 gigabytes in size and growing. Using sharding, the huge blockchain program is split up and shared by the network of thousands of computers.