Deconstructing the Decentralization Trilemma

Harry Halpin

2020

Abstract

The vast majority of applications at this moment rely on centralized servers to relay messages between clients, where these servers are considered trusted third-parties. With the rise of blockchain technologies over the last few years, there has been a move away from both centralized servers and traditional federated models to more decentralized peer-to-peer alternatives. However, there appears to be a trilemma between security, scalability, and decentralization in blockchain-based systems. Deconstructing this trilemma using well-known threat models, we define a typology of centralized, federated, and decentralized architectures. Each of the different architectures has this trilemma play out differently. Facing a possible decentralized future, we outline seven hard problems facing decentralization and theorize that the differences between centralized, federated, and decentralized architectures depend on differing social interpretations of trust.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Halpin H. (2020). Deconstructing the Decentralization Trilemma.In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT, ISBN 978-989-758-446-6, pages 505-512. DOI: 10.5220/0009892405050512

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt20,
author={Harry Halpin},
title={Deconstructing the Decentralization Trilemma},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT,},
year={2020},
pages={505-512},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009892405050512},
isbn={978-989-758-446-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT,
TI - Deconstructing the Decentralization Trilemma
SN - 978-989-758-446-6
AU - Halpin H.
PY - 2020
SP - 505
EP - 512
DO - 10.5220/0009892405050512