Layer 2 protocols have performed a essential position in scaling the Ethereum community. The blockchain’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin famous that Layer 2s in 2025 represents a big evolution from their experimental beginnings in 2019, having achieved sure decentralization milestones, secured billions of {dollars} in worth, and scaled Ethereum’s transaction capability by 17-fold, all whereas concurrently reducing charges.
Nonetheless, Buterin said that challenges stay, notably round scaling and heterogeneity.
Blob Area and Interoperability Challenges
In his newest weblog put up, Buterin identified that Ethereum’s present blob area – a useful resource for storing and processing information on the blockchain – barely meets the calls for of as we speak’s Layer 2s and their use circumstances. As such, this limitation may hinder the platform’s capacity to accommodate future progress.
Moreover, the heterogeneity of Layer 2s creates challenges with regards to interoperability, composability, and consumer expertise.
Whereas Ethereum’s preliminary imaginative and prescient for scaling concerned a shard-based system of homogenous blockchains, Buterin famous that Layer 2s have as an alternative advanced right into a fragmented ecosystem of chains created by completely different actors, every with completely different requirements and infrastructure necessities.
To handle these challenges, the Ethereum co-founder outlined a number of key steps. On the Layer 1 aspect, Ethereum should speed up scaling blobs and develop the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) and fuel limits to deal with actions equivalent to proofs, large-scale DeFi, deposits, withdrawals, and mass exit eventualities.
On the Layer 2 entrance, he burdened the necessity for improved safety, making certain ensures equivalent to censorship resistance, mild consumer verifiability, and the absence of trusted events. Interoperability throughout Layer 2s and wallets should even be prioritized to allow simple interactions throughout chains by means of standardized addresses, message-passing protocols, bridges, and environment friendly cross-chain funds.
For customers, Ethereum ought to really feel like a unified ecosystem moderately than a set of disparate chains, Buterin added.
Strengthening ETH as a Triple-Level Asset
Buterin additionally said that Ethereum’s future as a robust triple-point asset – functioning as a retailer of worth, medium of alternate, and unit of account – requires a “multi-pronged” technique to maximise the worth of ETH.
Step one is to cement ETH as the first asset throughout the mixed Layer 1 and Layer 2 Ethereum economic system. This consists of prioritizing ETH, the principle collateral for decentralized functions and monetary ecosystems.
Subsequent comes incentivizing Layer 2s to allocate a portion of their charges towards the broader Ethereum ecosystem, which may generate sustainable funding. This will likely contain burning a part of the charges, staking them, or channeling proceeds into public items for the Ethereum community.
Third, whereas rollups provide alternatives for Layer 1 to seize worth by means of MEV, it’s vital to keep up flexibility, recognizing that not all rollups can undertake this mannequin on account of completely different utility necessities. Lastly, Ethereum may discover elevating the blob depend as a possible income stream.
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