The blockchain trilemma — a fundamental challenge in blockchain design — posits that blockchain networks can only optimize for two out of three key properties: decentralization, security and scalability.
Major blockchains including Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to struggle with this trade-off, often sacrificing scalability to maintain security and decentralization. This has resulted in high transaction fees, slow confirmation times, and a limited throughput that hinders mainstream adoption. Others, like Solana, have chosen to sacrifice decentralization in the name of high TPS.
The Subspace Protocol, which underlies the Autonomys Network, takes a novel approach to resolving the blockchain trilemma in connecting decentralization to security through its proof-of-archival-storage (PoAS) consensus mechanism. The network will then achieve hyper-scalability through the implementation of our forthcoming scalability roadmap.
Originally envisioned as the most decentralized blockchain in web3, Autonomys taps into the most accessible, commodified hardware resource on the planet — disk storage. Every consumer computer has some storage capacity. Leveraging that idle resource for network security (instead of expensive ASICs or inegalitarian stake thresholds) unlocks unprecedented decentralization, as well as access to expansive distributed data storage.
Rather than treating decentralization and security as separate concerns, the storage-based Subspace Protocol recognizes that the network’s security is directly proportional to how distributed the storage is across independent participants. In implementing a one-disk-one-vote system, Autonomys ensures that the network becomes more secure as it becomes more decentralized, effectively collapsing two sides of the trilemma into one.
What makes the Subspace Protocol particularly elegant is how it transforms what is typically seen as a blockchain’s greatest burden — storing the ever-growing history — into its primary security mechanism. Instead of viewing blockchain storage as a necessary evil that threatens decentralization, Autonomys makes it the cornerstone of network security.
Farmers (storage ‘miners’) create and store unique partial replicas of the chain’s history, with their ability to participate in consensus directly tied to their storage contribution. This means that the very act of securing the network also ensures its history remains distributed and available — a remarkable alignment of incentives that addresses both the farmer’s dilemma and the network’s need for robust data availability.
By reimagining the relationship between security, decentralization, and storage, the Autonomys Network offers a fresh perspective on scaling blockchain networks while maintaining their fundamental value propositions.
The Autonomys Network — the foundation layer for AI3.0 — is a hyper-scalable decentralized AI (deAI) infrastructure stack encompassing high-throughput permanent distributed storage, data availability and access, and modular execution. Our deAI ecosystem provides all the essential components to build and deploy secure super dApps (AI-powered dApps) and on-chain agents, equipping them with advanced AI capabilities for dynamic and autonomous functionality.
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