The Blockchain Impossible Triangle refers to the widely accepted idea that decentralized networks can only It can achieve 2 of the 3 characteristics of decentralization, security, and scalability.

What is the decentralization of the blockchain

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Decentralization refers to how power is given to people around the world to manage, rather than being managed centrally by one person or entity. In the blockchain field, it mainly represents the number of nodes participating in block generation and transaction verification. The greater the number of nodes, the greater the degree of decentralization.

What is a node? What role does it play in blockchain? Please refer to the entry "What is a node/validator".

What is the security of blockchain?

Based on the nature of blockchain, if someone could control more than half of the network nodes (51%), they would be able to change blocks, manipulate transactions, and steal funds from the network. Security generally represents the cost of manipulating the network, and it is often closely related to the consensus mechanism. The higher the cost required, the more secure the blockchain will be.

How to control more than half of the nodes? Please refer to the entry "What is a 51% attack".

What is the scalability of blockchain?

Scalability refers to a blockchain’s ability to support high transaction volumes and future growth. This means that the performance of the blockchain will not be affected by the increase in usage scenarios and the number of users. Generally speaking, the faster a blockchain processes transactions, the more scalable it is.

"Impossible Triangle"

Centralized platforms, such as VISA, are both scalable and secure. While decentralization is the cornerstone of blockchain and digital assets, ensuring that every user has open access to a transparent network, it also has a troublesome drawback:due to the amount of information that needs to be processed to maintain the data sharing system With too much volume, transactions will be slower and the system will be more difficult to scale.

However, it is scalability that is the main way for blockchain networks to compete with traditional centralized platforms. At present, the network settlement speed and availability of centralized platforms are far superior to blockchain networks . In order to improve scalability, blockchain networks inevitably need to sacrifice part of decentralization (such as reducing the number of nodes), or security (such as changing the consensus mechanism), or even both need to make some sacrifices. But for attackers who want to take over the network, the difficulty of carrying out the attack will be reduced.

These problems together constitute the "Blockchain Impossible Triangle". Under the existing technical conditions, any blockchain network must be decentralized, SecurityandScalability.

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