Achieving scalable and decentralized blockchain systems: a filecoin-based solution to the blockchain trilemma

Abstract

With the growing demand for blockchain technology, the deployment of various applications has highlighted the critical chal- lenge of balancing scalability, security, and decentralization—termed the blockchain trilemma. To ensure blockchain’s effectiveness in real-world scenarios, resolving this trilemma with minimal trade-offs is crucial. Despite recent advancements, existing solutions, including Filecoin’s decentralized storage, have not fully addressed these challenges. While Filecoin reduces on-chain data re- dundancy through cryptographic proofs (PoRep/PoSt), its throughput remains insufficient (< 50 TPS) and vulnerable to adversarial attacks like selfish mining. In this study, we propose a novel Filecoin-based architecture that tackles the trilemma by reducing trans- action size to 50.6 bytes via Data Identification Numbers (DINs), achieving 145 TPS (a 20 × improvement over baseline Filecoin) with 1 MB blocks while maintaining 80% chain quality under 45% adversarial influence. Our approach enhances decentralization by minimizing storage requirements (292 bytes per reference block) and lowering hardware demands for mining nodes ($500/n- ode). Cost-efficiency analysis demonstrates a 99.9% reduction in energy consumption (0.001 kWh/Tx) compared to Bitcoin’s PoW (1,200 kWh/Tx) and a 3,448 × improvement in storage efficiency over baseline Filecoin. Security is preserved through PoRep/PoSt optimizations, resisting double-spending and Sybil attacks. Theoretical and empirical evaluations, including adversarial simulations and comparisons with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Filecoin, validate unprecedented scalability-security-decentralization trade-offs. This work sets a new benchmark for blockchain systems, enabling decentralized applications to rival centralized systems in throughput, cost, and robustness.