{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/117780"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/117780","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Resolving blockchain trilemmas","abstract":"Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2023-04-12 without embargo terms","abstract_html":"Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2023-04-12 without embargo terms","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Rana, Ranvir"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Electrical & Computer Engr","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Viswanath, Pramod","Hajek, Bruce","Srikant, Rayadurgam","Miller, Andrew","Ren, Ling"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-12","date_published":"2022-12","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:56Z","subjects":["Blockchain","Bootstrapping","Sharding","Resource Allocation","Distributed Systems"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["Copyright 2022 Ranvir Rana"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117780","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Viswanath, Pramod","Hajek, Bruce","Srikant, Rayadurgam","Miller, Andrew","Ren, Ling"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Rana, Ranvir"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2022-12","2022-11-29"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Electrical & Computer Engr"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Blockchain","Bootstrapping","Sharding","Resource Allocation","Distributed Systems"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2022 Ranvir Rana"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117780"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2023-04-12 without embargo terms","The student, Ranvir Rana, accepted the attached license on 2022-11-25 at 00:34.","The student, Ranvir Rana, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-11-25 at 00:44.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-11-29 at 09:35.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18635 on 2023-04-12 at 07:32:45","Three ideal properties characterize a blockchain: decentralization, security, and scalability. Existing blockchain designs satisfy at most two of the three properties; as examples, consider: Bitcoin is decentralized and secure, but not scalable; EOS, TRON, and several proof-of-stake blockchains are secure and scalable, but not decentralized; Conflux and IOTA are decentralized and scalable, but not secure. Unsuccessful attempts to build scalable, decentralized, and secure blockchains, constituting all three properties, have led to a folk theorem known as the blockchain protocol trilemma, which states that a blockchain can achieve only two of the three ideal properties. In this dissertation, we disprove this trilemma by proposing Trifecta, a blockchain architecture that achieves all three properties by being: (1) decentralized, with a limited amount of compute, storage, and communication resources per node; (2) secure against fully adaptive adversaries with hashing power up to the honest power of the entire network; and (3) throughput scaling near linearly with the number of network nodes. We implement Trifecta as a full-stack blockchain in Rust and demonstrate a total throughput of 250K transactions per second. A key component of the Trifecta architecture is Free2Shard, a distributed resource allocation algorithm that ensures that each shard has sufficient honest mining power under an adaptive adversary. We show the performance of Free2Shard to be near information-theoretically optimal by connecting to the classical work of Blackwell approachability in dynamic game theory. In a separate line of work, a blockchain economics trilemma is posited in the literature: at most two of the following three economic properties are satisfied by any blockchain design – self-sufficient, rent-free, and resource-efficient. We argue that Trifecta with Free2Shard optimizes the rent and resource cost per transaction and propose Advocate to minimize the legal costs associated with bootstrapping PoW blockchains. Advocate is a bootstrapping gadget that achieves optimal chain quality even under adversarial mining majority and can be expended to work on any parallel chain type blockchains. We demonstrate the robustness of Advocate under a 90% adversarial majority via a full-stack implementation."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Resolving blockchain trilemmas"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Viswanath, Pramod","Hajek, Bruce","Srikant, Rayadurgam","Miller, Andrew","Ren, Ling"],"dc:creator":["Rana, Ranvir"],"dc:date":["2022-12","2022-11-29"],"dc:description":["Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2023-04-12 without embargo terms","The student, Ranvir Rana, accepted the attached license on 2022-11-25 at 00:34.","The student, Ranvir Rana, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-11-25 at 00:44.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-11-29 at 09:35.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18635 on 2023-04-12 at 07:32:45","Three ideal properties characterize a blockchain: decentralization, security, and scalability. Existing blockchain designs satisfy at most two of the three properties; as examples, consider: Bitcoin is decentralized and secure, but not scalable; EOS, TRON, and several proof-of-stake blockchains are secure and scalable, but not decentralized; Conflux and IOTA are decentralized and scalable, but not secure. Unsuccessful attempts to build scalable, decentralized, and secure blockchains, constituting all three properties, have led to a folk theorem known as the blockchain protocol trilemma, which states that a blockchain can achieve only two of the three ideal properties. In this dissertation, we disprove this trilemma by proposing Trifecta, a blockchain architecture that achieves all three properties by being: (1) decentralized, with a limited amount of compute, storage, and communication resources per node; (2) secure against fully adaptive adversaries with hashing power up to the honest power of the entire network; and (3) throughput scaling near linearly with the number of network nodes. We implement Trifecta as a full-stack blockchain in Rust and demonstrate a total throughput of 250K transactions per second. A key component of the Trifecta architecture is Free2Shard, a distributed resource allocation algorithm that ensures that each shard has sufficient honest mining power under an adaptive adversary. We show the performance of Free2Shard to be near information-theoretically optimal by connecting to the classical work of Blackwell approachability in dynamic game theory. In a separate line of work, a blockchain economics trilemma is posited in the literature: at most two of the following three economic properties are satisfied by any blockchain design – self-sufficient, rent-free, and resource-efficient. We argue that Trifecta with Free2Shard optimizes the rent and resource cost per transaction and propose Advocate to minimize the legal costs associated with bootstrapping PoW blockchains. Advocate is a bootstrapping gadget that achieves optimal chain quality even under adversarial mining majority and can be expended to work on any parallel chain type blockchains. We demonstrate the robustness of Advocate under a 90% adversarial majority via a full-stack implementation."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117780"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2022 Ranvir Rana"],"dc:subject":["Blockchain","Bootstrapping","Sharding","Resource Allocation","Distributed Systems"],"dc:title":["Resolving blockchain trilemmas"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Electrical & Computer Engr"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:56Z"}