1 week ago
Opinion by: Jay Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs
When CryptoKitties crashed the Ethereum web successful 2017, the manufacture learned a hard acquisition astir blockchain scalability. Today, with over $100 cardinal locked successful decentralized concern (DeFi) and millions of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) being traded, that acquisition is much applicable than ever. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — the motor that powers this enactment — is reaching its limits.
So far, the crypto community’s reply has been furniture 2 solutions — abstracted chains that process transactions and study backmost to Ethereum. But what if the community’s been looking for answers successful the incorrect place?
Layer 2s are not the solution
Layer 2 blockchains person agelong been touted arsenic the solution to the EVM’s show challenges, fixed their quality to offload the computational enactment from Ethereum to a secondary chain. Layer-2 solutions person proven to beryllium thing much than a “quick fix” alternatively of a imperishable solution, arsenic galore hoped for. As Gemini reported, a caller furniture 2 appeared each 19 days successful 2024, indicating that the competitory scenery is creating much problems alternatively of solving them.
Layer 2 solutions travel with their ain challenges, chiefly tied to centralization and interoperability. Many of today’s furniture 2 blockchains tally with centralized sequencers that could exposure the web to transaction censorship, transaction reordering and more. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin stated successful a caller blog station that furniture 2s are struggling to support interoperability. This called attraction to the disorganized authorities of furniture 2s, further contributing to liquidity fragmentation and a analyzable idiosyncratic experience.
Recent: L2 gaming enactment spikes successful February, but wallets diminution — Report
Advanced rollup designs person tried to hole these symptom points. Recently, determination has been a caller plan called autochthonal rollups that is trying to tackle furniture 2’s centralization issues. Native rollups instrumentality worth distant from projects, which volition importantly deter adoption. Consequently, it is doubtful that autochthonal rollups are the reply to each of Ethereum’s urgent problems.
With conscionable arsenic galore challenges arsenic the EVM itself, wherefore trust connected furniture 2s alternatively of looking elsewhere? Could determination beryllium a amended solution? According to L2BEAT, it costs around $95.53 million annually to tally each the large L2s. Instead of spending much wealth connected gathering and moving much L2s and interoperability solutions, wherefore not absorption connected refining the existing foundational layer?
A much close alternate to TPS
To make the astir performant furniture 1s, the manufacture indispensable archetypal reevaluate the attack to way blockchain performance. Most blockchains absorption connected throughput, utilizing transactions per 2nd (TPS) to comparison concatenation performance. While galore reason that reaching the astir important transactions per 2nd is the mode to alteration mainstream adoption for crypto, TPS unluckily doesn’t let for apples-to-apples comparisons since antithetic types of transactions necessitate antithetic amounts of compute.
For example, an Ether (ETH) transportation requires 21,000 units of gas, whereas an ERC-20 transportation needs 65,000, confirming that TPS conveys zero worth erstwhile tracking wide transactions and web throughput.
A caller standardized show metric that amended reflects web computing capableness indispensable beryllium developed to recognize a blockchain's afloat potential. This is wherever an alternate show metric called “gas per second” emerges — a measurement that evaluates the state fees required to process transactions, amended reflecting antithetic transaction types. While TPS is champion served to measure elemental ETH transfers, state per 2nd shows the bigger representation by considering each computational efforts, adjacent for analyzable transactions.
Given the novelty of this metric, measuring state per 2nd crossed each chains volition beryllium a agelong process but a important measurement successful blockchain’s evolution.
Going backmost to the basics: Layer 1s
The capableness of furniture 1s has historically been overlooked, arsenic galore Ethereum researchers focused connected a rollup-centric roadmap. As the backbone of the full crypto ecosystem, furniture 1s are the cardinal to scaling the EVM. To lick EVM’s scalability challenge, furniture 1s indispensable commencement rebuilding the EVM from scratch with show successful caput supra thing else.
The EVM faces terrible web congestion and precocious state prices arsenic measurement increases. It’s clip for furniture 1s to standard to onboard the adjacent procreation of users. Approaches specified arsenic parallelization volition assistance amended throughput and, combined with transforming the EVM’s statement mechanics and retention solutions, volition acceptable a caller show modular for the manufacture and found a much developer-friendly situation for projects.
The due solution to scaling the EVM
For the past fewer years, Layer 2s person been presented arsenic the reply to providing the cheapest and fastest mode to execute transactions. Layer 2s are not what the EVM genuinely needs. From time one, Layer 1s person ever been the existent solution to the EVM’s scalability problem.
It is clip to beryllium unfastened to adopting much close show metrics and divert attraction to improving web performance. These changes volition pave the mode for the EVM to execute its highest potential, introducing levels of scalability and ratio ne'er seen before. The EVM is present to stay, but its aboriginal depends connected the manufacture to build.
Opinion by: Jay Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs.
This nonfiction is for wide accusation purposes and is not intended to beryllium and should not beryllium taken arsenic ineligible oregon concern advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed present are the author’s unsocial and bash not needfully bespeak oregon correspond the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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