A formal rebuttal of "The Blockchain Trilemma: A Formal Proof of the Inherent Trade-Offs Among Decentralization, Security, and Scalability" by Souhail Mssassi and Anas Abou El Kalam.
AKA - Failed Peer Review at the worst.
A formal rebuttal of "The Blockchain Trilemma: A Formal Proof of the Inherent Trade-Offs Among Decentralization, Security, and Scalability" by Souhail Mssassi and Anas Abou El Kalam (Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(1), 19) is warranted on the basis of its flawed premises, incorrect assumptions about Bitcoin, and misapplication of computational theory. The authors claim a formal proof of the so-called “blockchain trilemma,” yet this is neither mathematically rigorous nor conceptually consistent when analysed alongside A Formal Refutation of the Blockchain Trilemma by Craig Wright (arXiv:2507.05809 [cs.CC], https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.05809).
The central claim of Mssassi et al. is that one cannot simultaneously maximise decentralisation, scalability, and security in a blockchain system. They assert this as a formal trade-off—what they frame as a trilemma—drawing an analogy to Brewer’s CAP theorem. However, the supposed proof is nothing more than a series of conjectures and informal reasoning dressed in symbolic notation. There is no rigorous mathematical framework, no formal reduction, and certainly no grounding in the actual architecture or economic design of Bitcoin. In contrast, Wright’s paper directly dismantles the very foundation of the trilemma argument, showing that the trilemma is a mischaracterisation arising from flawed definitions and the use of decentralisation as a floating signifier.
Subscribe
Mssassi's argument suffers from the first and fatal flaw: the term decentralisation is undefined or, worse, defined tautologically. On page 2 of their paper, the authors implicitly equate decentralisation with node count and geographic dispersion—an error repeatedly discredited. As Wright outlines, decentralisation in Bitcoin does not imply “everyone running a node” or equality of influence across users. Rather, Bitcoin’s security model depends on economic incentives aligning through proof-of-work, with enforcement governed by the fixed protocol and miners who follow that protocol. Bitcoin is permissionless in the sense that anyone can participate under the rules—not that every participant is equal in effect or function.
Moreover, Mssassi’s abstraction collapses when examined under the economic realities of block propagation and block creation. Their model assumes that security requires a high number of independently validating nodes (undefined in function), and scalability contradicts this by implying reduced redundancy. I have demonstrated that scalability is achieved precisely by not having everyone validate every transaction, since redundant validation has zero marginal utility after the block is mined and accepted.
A second major error in Mssassi’s work is the misapplication of security models. The authors assume security as a monolith, but fail to distinguish between Byzantine fault tolerance and the Nakamoto consensus model. They cite traditional consensus protocols without acknowledging the radically different design of Bitcoin, where probabilistic finality through proof-of-work is not about absolute agreement but economic irreversibility. Wright points out that such a system scales indefinitely because consensus is not built on message passing between trusted parties but through an objective, computational race. Mssassi’s framing implies a trust model incompatible with Bitcoin’s architecture.
Thirdly, the “formal proof” is a semantic shell game. Their proof is not derived from first principles nor from computational constraints. It is instead a stylised narrative using symbolic logic to encode assumptions as axioms. At no point is there a theorem presented with a verifiable falsification mechanism. Wright explicitly critiques this approach in his paper, noting that the supposed trilemma reduces to a false dichotomy: that increased scale must reduce either decentralisation or security. Yet, as Wright proves, when correctly defined, all three aspects can be simultaneously maintained under the fixed Bitcoin protocol.
Specifically, Wright shows that scalability is not limited by network consensus but by economic propagation and block size capacity. Nodes that validate blocks need not validate every transaction in real time, and redundant validation is not a requirement for security. The trilemma dissolves when decentralisation is understood as access to participation under rules, security as economic finality, and scalability as the ability to process a large number of transactions under fixed protocol constraints.
In conclusion, Mssassi and Abou El Kalam’s paper does not constitute a formal proof of anything. It is an ideologically driven, semantically hollow construction that misconstrues the technical operation of Bitcoin and related systems. Their assumptions are flawed, their logic circular, and their definitions selectively engineered to force a trade-off that does not inherently exist. Wright’s paper, by contrast, applies rigorous formalism grounded in the actual protocol design of Bitcoin, showing that the so-called trilemma is neither necessary nor mathematically demonstrable. It is a myth borne of confusion and perpetuated by those unwilling to engage with the system as implemented. This paper should be retracted or re-evaluated under proper peer review for failing to meet the standards of computational or economic analysis.
A formal paper showing how poor this “work” is shall be forthcoming.