How Blockchain Breaks the “Triple Paradox” to Protect Data Security

We often hear that blockchain will be the next-generation technology that will subvert the Internet and a manufacturing machine of trust. It will profoundly change the structure and mode of the existing Internet, and will have an incalculable and significant impact on human society.

We may have fully understood the technical advantages of blockchain. Distributed ledgers and smart contracts have the characteristics of non-tamperability, traceability, openness and transparency, encryption algorithms, etc., and can establish trust relationships. However, there is still a long way to go from technology research to large-scale commercial use. At least the well-known “trilemma” of decentralization, efficiency, and stability should be resolved.

Trilemma

Although blockchain technology is gradually applied in many scenarios, this technology has long faced the technical bottleneck of the “impossible triangle” (also known as the ternary paradox). No matter which consensus mechanism is adopted to determine the generation method of new blocks, the blockchain network model cannot take into account the three requirements of performance, security, and decentralization at the same time, and can only satisfy two of them at the expense of the other.