Bitcoin Forum

we all know that bitcoin blockchain has trilemma that decentralization, scalability and security cant be achieved in single blockchain.

Bitcoin is secure and decentralized but has scalability issue.

New blockchains like EOS are scalable but have issues with decentralization and security.

the question is can we move forward with this blockchain trilemma or there will be any solution for this?

Sacrifice scalability and make non-scalability an actual feature to keep BTC what it is: SoV which needs time to prove itself.
Need a MoE? Just use fiat or wechat money.

Can bitcoin continue its journey with non-scalability? that's a big concern. we need something that is fast and secure

That's a great question. I am sure a lot of other people are also concerned about this particular matter - scalability! A lot of people scream about the fees and the speed of bitcoin transaction and it's indeed an issue. Probably we are not facing the heat right at this moment but if bitcoin is adopted worldwide, transaction fees and speed will be a big issue. But we have a solution to it. Have you heard about Lightening Network?

If you haven't heard about it, I have a good resource for you to see,

https://www.binance.vision/blockchain/what-is-lightning-network

We currently have many options for LN enabled wallet and you can definitely try them. I promise, that once you use LN for your bitcoin transactions, your concerns about scalability will be gone forever!

Hope this helps!

you are right. Scalability is a pretty complicated problem, especially since bitcoin is getting more mainstream and widely adopted. LN is indeed one good alternative, with the idea that not all transactions must be recorded on the blockchain, by opening a payment channel instead. This allows for instant transactions so that I think it is very suitable for micropayment, very effective for the adoption of bitcoin as an alternative payment.

Bitcoin is still a newborn method that has no real age yet. Scalability is what encourage the majority of investors to adopt it, willing to make small to large profits from the movement of the price. That price is also infected by the scalability until we reach to install a stable protocol for fast and secure transactions. Updates are required if we think that bitcoin can continue as a real store of value .

Bitcoin's approach is simply the most logical one - developers value decentralization more than scalability because scalability without decentralization is meaningless, since we already have centralized systems that are very scalable - Visa could process all 10 years of Bitcoin's transactions in a day or two. On top of that, if you give up decentralization it's impossible to get it back, because the damage is irreparable - if you would try to increase the blocksize only temporarily, it would bloat the blockchain, so even if you reduce it later, it would be harder for nodes to operate.

So, Bitcoin will eventually solve this problem (Lightning Network is already close to official release, and other solutions may emerge), but centralized altcoins will never become decentralized.

If I remember correctly Andreas talked about this and most would say that the first layer is similar to gold. It's slow, 'heavy' and needs a 'long time' to move, but it's secure and the most valuable. The second layer and so on will be faster and suitable for small-medium transactions. It's like gold - gold-pegged currency - digital fiat, etc.

LN and more solution is being explored now, so that should be an alternative for scalability issues. As for other blockchains, they probably don't have to have the same degree as security like bitcoin due to their purpose, so solving the trilemma is not a major deal for them as long as they have a fast & reliable blockchain.

Layer 2 solutions. Getting scalability without sacrificing security and decentralization on the main chain. Sure you could say that layer 2 solutions are less decentralized and less secure, but I wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of these two for my sort of "coffee transactions".

scaling bitcoin is all about reaching a balance between speed, security, decentralization and capacity. it is not something we can ever solve. instead we can only improve and each time the balance is disturbed, make it so that it reaches a balance again.

there is no such thing as "official release" for decentralized protocols. LN has been released a while ago and it has been working fine ever since.

It has the status of beta, when it will leave it will can be considered "officially released". I know it's already on the mainnet for quite some time, but developers themselves don't recommend people to actually use it for real money applications, because there's always the risk of bugs. And I know that it works pretty well, but when it comes to money, there's no such things as "good enough" - everything must be as close to perfect as possible.

Almost all are experiencing this kind of future problem in crypto which is why the adoption is going to be take a long time until this will have a solution. Ethereum found a way like the Sharding but this however will also affect the decentralization like BTC as well.

There were technical discussions I've read that its going to take another technology because a project just can;t have it all but will risk decentralization and security inorder to achieve higher number of TPS.

i see your point but the "protocol" is not in beta, the "implementations" are. just like how bitcoin core is still in beta even after 11 years. the developers suggest not using it with big amounts to reduce the risks because their implementation might still have some unfound bugs. we could say the same thing for bitcoin in general.

We know that Lightning network is already there but it hasn't been able to take off yet, not many are using it. Why still bitcoin old network is preferred over LN? Its because we still dont trust this new concept.

Though we have great Lightning wallets right now like Phoenix[1], it's mostly because most exchanges doesn't support LN yet, and that for some reason people aren't willing to test it out. While LN might probably not be ready for mass adoption yet, there's definitely great progress with the wallets we have right now. Seriously, test out Phoenix[1]. It's underrated as hell.

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[1] https://phoenix.acinq.co/

This means that current slowness is acceptable as it ensures decentralization n security.
This brings me to another question, do businesses really need a scalable and decentralized block chain ? Probably they are happy with centralized block chains that are fully scalable and we the ordinary users are left on the mercy of slow Bitcoin blockchains.

The Lightning Network doesn't seem to solve the trilemma, though. While it solves the scalability issue more or less, decentralization suffers, and thus many people are against  it. I am sure there are more reputable sources with the info, but here's a Medium article  (https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800)exploring the issue of centralization that comes to help with scalability. So basically, it seems that we trully cannot achieve all of it at once. Maybe it's not that it's in principle impossible, perhaps something smart can be figured out in the future.

Since LN is not really Bitcoin, Bitcoin cannot do much about it. It needs WALLET support, for it to be used. If core puts it in the official wallet, that probably helps, but i think its the light wallets like Electrum that will change the game. When the (true) v4 Electrum release comes out, which is aiming precisely for LN support (please people, stop falling to the obvious v4 Electrum fakes out there, stick the official page and sign check any binaries you download from official sources)

I don't particularly care for LN much, but like it or not, that will offload the transaction traffic at least somewhat, enough for Bitcoin to remain useful without any radical changes.

There is no "trillema" at all, because there is no scalability issue either. If you think Bitcoin is unsuitable to buy coffee, don't use it for coffee.

Bitcoin lightning network also has this trilemma.
It sacrifices security(when compared with on chain bitcoin) for decentralization and scalability.

There would be another second layer method which sacrifices decentralization while aiming for security and scalability.

Decentralized: If the block needs to be signed, it is impossible for the mining pool to share the private key, so the miners cannot share computing power to mine and cannot form a mining pool.
Scalability:Isomorphic multi-chain system, like govm. Its performance can be expanded by adding new chains. All chains have the same consensus algorithm and tokens, which can be easily traded between different chains.
GOVM: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230875.0

Thats a valid point. Scalability is only issue if we need faster transactions like buying coffee. If you are receiving a payment from someone and can wait for an hour (in most cases we are) then there wont be any scalability issue.

I repeat my question, is there any commercial application of a block-chain that is decentralized as well as scalable. We know businesses like banks only need centralized blockchains that are scalable (XRP for instance) and they wont accept block-chains like BTC. Probably thats the reason no one paying any attention for development of decentralized as well as scalable block-chains.

Because there are really few merchants accepting Lightning payments. The UX for actually using Lightning is also difficult for the average user. Although there are Lightning custodial wallets, like BlueWallet for IOS, which is easy for newbies.

On the topic of solving the Blockchain Trilemma, Lightning itself might not solve it, but I believe developing Bitcoin as a layered protocol is the right path.

I like the idea of alternatives where it is allowed not to write all transactions to the blockchain. This speeds up payment processes. Instead, it is sufficient to use the payment channel.