Dynamic Blockchain Reconfiguration: Balancing the Trilemma Trade-off Using Digital Twins

The trilemma trade-off problem between decentralisation, scalability, and security states that in blockchain systems the above properties are negatively correlated. Infrastructure, node configuration, choice of Consensus Protocol, and complexity of the underlying application are cited among the factors that affect the balance of the trade-off. Given that Blockchains are complex, dynamic systems, a dynamic approach to their management and reconfiguration at runtime is deemed necessary to reflect the changes in the state of the infrastructure and application. This work proposes the use of Digital Twins as the means of optimising the trilemma trade-off of blockchain i.e., re-configuring system parameters such as to maximise scalability, decentralisation and security. Specifically, through a bi-directional feedback loop between the system and the digital twin, simulation, what-if analysis and machine learning techniques will be employed for the computation of an optimal configuration given the current system state. Furthermore, a dynamic update mechanism is proposed to allow for blockchain reconfiguration without violating the decentralisation of the system.