What are the possible tradeoffs of decentralization, scalability and security?

Technical Challenges
Required Readings:
‘21st Geneva Report on the World Economy – The Impact of Blockchain Technology on Finance:
Catalyst for Change’ Chapter 2 section on ‘Impediments to broad adoption’ – (pages 9 – 13)
‘The Scalability Trilemma in Blockchain’ NeonVest, Medium (October 19, 2018)
‘Blockchain’s Scaling Problem, Explained’ CoinTelegraph (August 22, 2018)
‘Who Scales It Best? Inside Blockchains’ Ongoing Transactions-Per-Second Race’ CoinTelegraph
(January 22, 2019)
‘Privacy and Cryptocurrency, Part I: How Private is Bitcoin?’ Eric Wall, Medium
‘Andreas M. Antonopoulos Warns Against Ethereum In-Fighting’ Coindesk (February 22, 2019)
Optional Readings:
‘Layer 2 | the lightning network’ Digital Currency Initiative
‘On sharding blockchains’ Ethereum Wiki (accessed August 20, 2018)
‘How to Recover Your Wallet if Your Private Keys Are Lost’ CoinTelegraph (November 16, 2018)
Study Questions/Issues to Prepare:
1) How critical are the technical challenges – scalability, privacy, security, interoperability, &
governance – of current blockchain technology?
2) What are the possible tradeoffs of decentralization, scalability and security? What are tradeoffs
of consensus software updates, governance and so-called ‘hard forks’?
3) What might current work – Layer 2 applications, zero-knowledge proofs, alternative consensus
algorithms – do to address current technical challenges?