The Three Pillars of Blockchain

The Three Pillars of Blockchain
Decentralization, Scalability, and Security

Every blockchain can be rated on the basis of 3 components: Decentralization, Scalability, and Security.

It is a challenge to keep all of these three components in balance. Usually, one of them is partly sacrificed to get the other two.

• Scalability
• Decentralization (censorship resistance)
• Security

Scalability is required for the technology to gain broad adoption. Decentralization is necessary to cut costs (middlemen) and to build trust. Security is the most crucial concept, and without it, the technology would be unusable.

For example, a traditional bank has sacrificed all decentralization — but still keeps its client’s funds relatively safe.

The vanilla blockchain tech achieved decentralization and security but suffers from the lack of scalability.

Security is the most important of them all, as no one would use banks or Bitcoin without it. For example, we could say the lack of security in sidechains has stopped us in adopting that scalability solution.