Using UUIDs can have downsides such as performance degradation, index bloat, and maintenance challenges.UUIDs are suitable for distributed systems where unique IDs need to be generated locally to avoid collisions.Generating UUIDs upfront can be beneficial for scenarios like mobile apps requiring immediate identifiers.UUIDs provide security benefits by being hard to guess, making them ideal for public APIs or magic links.They also hide insertion order, preventing users from determining database size or insertion frequency.Common pitfalls of UUIDs include larger index sizes, fragmentation, and decreased insertion and read performance.Sequential IDs like BIGINT may offer better performance and smaller indexes in certain situations.A hybrid approach combining sequential IDs internally and UUIDs externally can balance efficiency and security.UUIDs do not automatically ensure optimal sharding and require a thoughtful strategy for data distribution.Ultimately, choosing between UUIDs and sequential IDs should be based on specific system requirements to maintain database efficiency.