Blockchains today are far from perfect. Bitcoin was first released over 10 years ago, but it still suffers from low throughput and high transaction fees. Ethereum has been pushing updates for years now, but are barely doing better than Bitcoin in terms of scalability. This problem occurs due to what is known as the blockchain trilemma.
In this article, I will cover what the blockchain trilemma is, what Algorand is, and how they are attempting to solve it in a high level manner. This article assumes some basic knowledge of blockchains and terminology associated with them.
The Blockchain Trilemma… What is it?
A trilemma is a situation where there are three options, but at most only two of them are possible at the same time. In the case of the blockchain trilemma, the three options are:
- Security
- Scalability
- Decentralization
If the trilemma holds, there are no good situations with just two options being true.
