# The Scalability Challenge One of the main pending challenges is Bitcoin's capacity to process a high volume of transactions without compromising the principles of security and decentralization. This tension is known as the blockchain trilemma, which poses the difficulty of simultaneously maximizing three essential attributes: * Security: guaranteeing cryptographic integrity against attacks. * Decentralization: maintaining an open network, without single points of control. * Scalability: processing many transactions efficiently. Bitcoin (BTC), in its current design, prioritizes security and decentralization, which has led to limiting its transactional performance on the base layer. To address this limitation, various strategies have emerged: * Layer 2 solutions, like Lightning Network, which allow payments off the main chain and settle them later on the blockchain. * Forks with base-layer scalability, like the BSV blockchain, which expand block size to allow thousands of transactions directly on the main network. The viability of these solutions will depend on their capacity to conserve Bitcoin's original principles, achieve mass adoption, and remain interoperable with the broader ecosystem. BSV resolves this by eliminating artificial limits, allowing large blocks for efficient and accessible transactions to non-experts. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://hub.bsvblockchain.org/higher-learning/bsv-academy/bitcoin-as-historical-phenomenon-1/future-perspectives-scalability-digital-sovereignty-and-global-competition/the-scalability-challenge.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.