The Cryptomise Sunday

Author: Mansi Patodi

13-Sept-2023

Blockchain Trilemma

Let us start with the meaning of Trilemma, "a situation where you have to make a tough choice between 3 things". But how does it connect with crypto? Let's carry on......

Blockchain is proven to solve many issues which traditional systems might lack.
However, where the blockchain seems the perfect solution to every problem, what stops it from rocking the paper?

It is this Blockchain Trilemma. This term was first pictured by Vitalik Buterin, addressing every blockchain developer's challenge of achieving decentralization, scalability and security at the same time. The components which make blockchain technology so effective.

Decentralization: This property ensures that a blockchain operates without the control of any central authority.

Scalability: The ability of blockchain to handle large numbers of transactions in less fees and less time.

Security: The blockchain should be utterly secure from malicious attacks and threats that can cause significant disruption to information.

Until now, all the blockchains have been able to provide only two out of these three benefits, sacrificing one of them. For instance, Bitcoin is decentralized and secure. However, it is not muchly scalable; Solana is secure and scalable but lacks decentralization, and Cardano, which is secure and decentralized, compromises scalability.

Can the Blockchain Trilemma be solved?

For some, it can never be achieved, but some with the belief to solve it have discovered possible solutions like Rollups, Sharding, Layer1 and Layer2, although it is not very clear how effective they can solve this Trilemma.