The Unsolved Mystery of The Blockchain Trilemma
Blockchain technology thrives on three core properties: security, decentralization, and scalability, popularly known as the “Blockchain Trilemma."
The Trilemma is the trio of blockchains and sometimes a discreditor of every blockchain ecosystem we have had until the time of publishing this article. As no recorded blockchain has been able to rise above this issue, i.e., that there is no blockchain ecosystem that can expectantly boast of possessing these three qualities at their apex, they are sentenced to sacrificing one of these properties for the other two.
In fact, most operational blockchains have these properties on the scale (1-0-1, 0-1-1).
Perhaps you are in the dark about this matter. Let us take a walk through these properties and see how a deficiency of either of them would affect the system as a whole.
Knowing The Trilemma
The emergence of Bitcoin, an electronic peer-to-peer cash transfer system created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, is an invention that catapulted the world into adopting blockchain technology. Ever since then, there has been a nonstop spread of this technology and a lot of founders have followed suit with their own creations.
Taking Bitcoin as a case study, It is a cryptographically encrypted chain that is written with the SHA-256 hash function used to store transactional data on a Merkle tree.
With bitcoin came decentralization and security, but there was a blooming issue. The bitcoin blockchain was not scalable as it could only process an average of 7 transactions per second and had a block time of ten minutes. Now, that is a lot of time.
Let us take a close look at these three factors.
Decentralization
Blockchain technology is advertised as DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology), which disperses power from the government and centralized companies to a distributed body (referred to as "nodes"). This simulation paves the way for transparency in the implementation of user data and ease in cross-border transactions between users.
What I love to refer to as the “democracy of blockchain," "decentralization" takes away the plague of censorship, which is currently an impending problem in the Web2 space.
The power of decision-making is distributed to everyone in the community, or in some cases, to individuals that can wield 51% authority, which can affect core decision-making. The question of total decentralization remains a farfetched reality. Rather, we can only settle for the chains that offer the best form of decentralization.
Security
Blockchain security, just like any kind of security, is essential for the integration of trust between users and companies.
This is the ability of the blockchain to resist external attacks or any other form of tampering.
Why is blockchain security important?
It is a core property that bridges that relationship. Once the bridge has been meddled with, the confidence users built in the company will be gone.
In recent years, there have been reports of attacks by scammers on several blockchains, exchanges, and companies.
There is a myth out there that states, “A blockchain that relies on improving its scalability would suffer a hinge in its security."
Scalability
The scalability of any blockchain network leverages its capacity to handle large transaction outputs.
Early blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum sacrificed their scalability for decentralization and security.
Bitcoin runs an average of 7 txns while Ethereum handles 35 txns.
This might not seem like a budding issue until you realize that a financial gateway like Visa handles a whopping 24,000 transactions.
For blockchain to gain wide adoption, it needs to scale with the pre-existing financial service providers.
Due to these limitations, developers began to build what is referred to as “layer 2 scaling solutions,” for example, sharding, lighting networks, and Zkrollups.
These solutions are basically built on the pre-existing layer 1 blockchains, but there are claims that these layer 2 solutions are not as secure or decentralized.
There are claims that blockchains with fewer node validators tend to have faster transaction times compared to blockchains with more nodes. For example, chains like Avax, Cardano, and Solana have fewer validators but faster transaction times.
The science behind this is that when there are fewer validators for a transaction, the validation time is greatly reduced.
We have Solana sitting at an unbelievable 65k TXNs, but Solana’s security is a major concern as it has suffered so many attacks in recent years.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. With the Ethereum 2.0 merge, it seeks to scale the chain to 100k txns, which is still in the works as the chain is gradually offloading to its Proof of Stake (POS) system.
Conclusion
Blockchain enthusiasts out there are always on the lookout for that one blockchain ecosystem that will scale above these limitations.
There isn’t any yet, “ maybe in the near future, which we would insatiably call the “chosen one."
The blockchain industry is still quite young, Now is the time for these chains to provide solutions to their lagging properties as blockchain keeps garnering wider adoption.
Did you enjoy reading this article?
I write content for blockchain startups, bridging the gap between developers and users.
Reach out to me at -AdetolaO@hotmail.com
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