Partitioning a blockchain network

A computer-implemented method for allocating and validating a blockchain transaction associated with a blockchain network comprising a plurality of nodes, wherein:

• the blockchain network is partitioned into a plurality of shards,
• each shard comprising at least one of said nodes, each of said nodes is a member of least one of said shards, each transaction in the blockchain network is allocated to at least one of said shards, and
• for each shard of which it is a member, each node maintains a UTXO set related to the transactions allocated to said shard, such that each shard is considered to contain a UTXO set;
• the method comprising the steps of, executed by a first node of said plurality of nodes:
• creating a first transaction;
• identifying a first shard that contains a first UTXO that corresponds to a first input of the first transaction;
• transmitting the first transaction to a second node in the first shard;
• identifying a second shard that contains a second UTXO that corresponds to a second input of the first transaction;
• and
• transmitting the first transaction to a third node in the second shard, wherein the first node is implemented by a first computing device and the second node is implemented by a second computing device;
• and
• executed by the second node:
• identifying that the first UTXO is in the UTXO set held by the second node for the first shard;
• performing a validation check on the first input using validity data of the first UTXO;
• and
• based on a determination that the first input is valid, adding the first transaction to a mempool associated with the second node, and propagating the first transaction to other member nodes of the first shard.