The blockchain trilemma is the challenge of creating a decentralized, secure, and scalable blockchain. It’s a difficult task, as three features often conflict: Decentralization, security, and scalability. However, Nexa, a new blockchain platform, aims to solve this trilemma by providing a unique architecture that is more scalable than other blockchains. This article will discuss how Nexa solves each part of the trilemma.
Decentralization
Besides being as decentralized as Bitcoin, Nexa’s consensus mechanism aims to be more decentralized than traditional proof of work algorithms using BlindedPoW, a “blinded” proof of work algorithm in a soon-to-be hard fork. This algorithm makes it impossible for miners to know whether they have found a solution or a share, which prevents mining pool solution withholding attacks. This ensures that miners cannot harm competing pools and that all miners receive a fair reward for their work.
Security
Transactions always go through. even if a block is mined at its maximum block size, the transaction must be included in the next block. Users who increase the transaction fee before broadcasting it will increase the likelihood of being included in the next block.
One of the critical ways Nexa achieves security is through its use of transparent transactions. In a traditional blockchain, scripts are executed on a general-purpose computing platform (such as the Ethereum Virtual Machine) to modify the state of the blockchain. However, this approach can be vulnerable to malicious actors who may try to manipulate the execution order of the scripts to gain an unfair advantage.
To address this issue, Nexa uses a transparent transaction architecture that explicitly and immutably specifies all blockchain records that will be accessed or deleted. This means that scripts do not modify the blockchain when executed — they control whether a transaction is valid. This approach makes it much more difficult for malicious actors to manipulate the blockchain, as they are limited to the data the transaction has announced it is accessing.
Scalability
The Nexa architecture is designed to be more scalable than other blockchains in several ways. One of the key ways it achieves this is through its use of Transparent Transactions. These transactions explicitly and immutably specify all blockchain records that will be accessed, deleted, and created. This means that scripts in Nexa only need to be executed once, as they do not modify the blockchain. Instead, miners only control whether the transaction is valid or not.
This has several benefits when it comes to scaling. First, it means that scripts can be run when the transaction arrives rather than having to be re-run during block creation. This allows for massively parallel transaction processing and UTXO (unspent transaction output) lookup.
To further enhance the scalability of the Nexa blockchain, the platform utilizes a technology called “bloom fast-filter” to process transactions. A bloom filter is a highly efficient method for discovering possible duplicates in large datasets, and the bloom fast-filter developed by Nexa takes this efficiency to the next level. The bloom fast-filter uses the already cryptographically-strong random data in the transaction inputs to select and permute bits so that an attacker cannot engineer collisions across the entire network. This allows for even more parallel processing of transactions and ensures that the blockchain can scale to meet the needs of a global user base.
In addition to these scalability advantages, Nexa is designed to utilize specialized hardware, such as FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), to increase its capacity further. FPGAs and ASICs are custom chips specifically designed for mining Nexa and are much more efficient than general-purpose CPUs. This allows the network to achieve much higher performance while using less energy, increasing its scalability.
Read more here: https://nexa.org/case-studies-database/nexa-how-it-solves-the-scalability-trilemma
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