[tutfbhuf]

There are "new generation" databases, some of them MySQL 5.6 compatible (e.g. Vitess) with the ability to massively scale in terms of read/write QPS (queries per second).

In database related podcasts you will hear that QPS is considered to be a solved problem nowadays.

[ikonic89]

We did test Vitess couple of years ago, just decided not to go with it. There were a lot of reasons for that, maybe a topic for another post.

[tutfbhuf]

Vitess is just one example, there are others. And it depends, some teams might be able to do some work to get along with MySQL, like chess.com. As in most cases, there is no silver bullet here.