How does Mithril increase Cardano network throughput?

Question

Charles talks about Mithril as a means to light client wallets.

My understanding of mithril is it takes a screenshot of sorts of upcoming blocks and by representing the blocks in a lighter manner for validation it can improve the network throughput.

So the reason this speeds up wallets is because it's less data to download.

I can understand how this helps for light client wallets but I understand less so how it helps increase network throughput. Is it that it allows for quicker validation of blocks because its less information to be passing around? At that point is it fair to say it doesn't speed up the network so much but instead would allow Cardano to speed up the network if they wanted to move to a more DAG style network design?

Answer 1

Blockchain throughput is a measure of how many actions are completed within a given time frame. You are absolutely right saying, that if the fewer Full Node wallets downloading the entire blockchain at a certain point in time, the higher the throughput of the blockchain is. Cardano "Light" Nodes (that are somewhat similar to SPV nodes in Bitcoin, but work slightly differently) can verify payments without needing to download the entire blockchain. Thus, it directly affects the throughput – this is true due to the fact that Cardano does not yet have a fair P2P connection.

However, there's one non-obvious thing touching Cardano decentralization. Read about it here.