Enterprises, Corporations, Individual businesses, Governments, others, are faced with problems that Blockchain technology have lasting solutions for. But the dilemma of choosing between blockchian and traditional technologies's solutions cut across many factors. These factors are centered around the major problems inhibiting Blockchain's wide acceptance most especially earlier staged ones.
Blockchain obviously has a considerably huge environmental cost. Bitcoin as an example is a very huge and valuable network, was claimed to consumes much energy as that used by over 159 countries of the world as the energy needed to keep the network running. Arguably, this is an outright effect of the Proof Of Work algorithm used by Bitcoin to achieve consensus among the network.
Again, blockchain can be cumbersome because of its less capacity to perform huge transactions at a relatively short time. Other blockchain problems you need to know.
The Trilemma
As development would always have it, many have attempted to write solutions to encourage adoption of blockchain at all suitable levels.
But can one be said to have achieved a milestone of development if he has to forfeit original idea/benefit of an innovation for another causing more harm?
- Scalability
- Security
- Decentralization
Usually a difficult decision to make having to trade scalability for security or forfeiting decentralization for scalability vice versa. This is a situation termed as trilemma. Consider an instance you don't want to have your network vulnerable to attack while trying to achieve speed. So, to balance the sides, Algorand network was developed to remove the barriers to the progress of blockchain without recourse to trading advantages for another.
In my last article, where I gave a brief introduction to Algorand, I discussed in short, an algorithm used to ensure harmonization among participants - Pure Proof Of Stake. Let us examine further how Algorand deals with the trilemma to enhance our understanding of the concept.
Scalability
Using Pure Proof Of Stake (PPoS) consensus algorithm, the odds of PoW are removed. This in turn assures near instant block finality (perhaps 3 seconds or less). The chain is free of tedious mathematical calculations that requires high computing and processing power.
High latency ==> System optimization ==> Speed ==> Fast transaction
Algorand requires minimal processing power and modest IT resources to be part of the network. So, anyone having connected and possess ALGO token can participate block consensus process.
Security
On Algorand chain, security is ensured at all levels. Walls are built around the network to be attack resistant and protect against data loss and data manipulation. As of now, forking Algorand chain is not possible so data integrity is maintained. An attacker needs a group of users to launch his malware but such trace is not left in the case of Algorand.
Decentralization
Lastly, without giving up one for one, Algorand is able to record high transaction throughput, secure ecosystem yet strengthens its decentralization arm with no delegate or central node runner. It was stated that one of the main benefits of PoS blockchains is the flexibility due to their reliance on code instead of hardware. So one effective way centralization has been deterred on a Proof of Stake blockchain is to program the blockchain in such a way that it encourages participation by token holders.
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