⚙️ The scalability trilemma is a theorem that formulates the main problem of scaling any distributed network. It states that a blockchain can have only two of three main characteristics:
⚙️ Decentralization implies that there is not a single person or organization on the network that controls its operation. Anyone can participate in the network and, as a result, control over it is completely distributed and is not in the hands of one person.
🐶 Security - without it, the level of decentralization of the blockchain will not matter. A reliable blockchain network must be resistant to malicious attacks.
🌐 Scalability is the ability of a blockchain to increase the number of processed transactions per second. It is necessary in order to attract a wide audience and billions of potential users to the project. However, this is where many blockchains have difficulty.
So why is this a problem?
For example, a solution to increase network scalability and speed is to reduce the number of participants confirming and adding data. However, this reduces the level of decentralization since the network is controlled by fewer people, and weakens security since the smaller scale makes the network more vulnerable to a 51% attack.
This is the trilemma: strengthening one of the key properties - decentralization, security or scalability - leads to weakening of the other.
It turns out that there is no universal solution to the scalability trilemma yet, but developers are looking for solutions to this problem, due to which the blockchain will develop further and will be able to process even more data.