Who is not a "Layer2"?

Editor's Note: This article comes fromBlock beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)

Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)

, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

This movement about migrating to Layer 2 has started since September last year. From time to time, you can see the deployment progress of leading DeFi projects such as Uniswap and Synthetix, as well as various bridging solutions launched by public chains such as Polkadot, Solana and Near.

While many projects are still evaluating the pros and cons of various Layer 2 solutions, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Huobi Ecological Chain (Heco) have taken advantage of this window to create a new "world". On February 19, the 24-hour trading volume of PancakeSwap on BSC briefly surpassed Uniswap, the leading DEX, especially its token CAKE, which "increased" its followers by 6 times in 20 days. However, there are also different voices such as "centralization" and "soulless".

The expansion of Ethereum is still going on, and the momentum of the exchange public chain is still expanding.

"Each project has its own considerations and priorities when choosing." Yang Mindao believes that for Uniswap, which has a stable leading position on the transaction side, migration is not their priority, but they insist on the principle of public chain neutrality, "as long as It is a chain with assets and users, and it is a chain that can be considered for deployment.”

Image source: Internet

Multi-chain deployment is indeed a pragmatic solution for the project side. Public chains like BSC and Heco provide a programmable development environment compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which greatly reduces the need for application developers. Migration cost and user threshold.

Due to the high transfer cost of Ethereum, more liquid mining players began to move to the new public chain to find opportunities, "If the cost is low enough and you can make money, why not play?" Similar views are not uncommon.

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Image source: Internet

If you are a reader familiar with mobile system disputes, it is easy to understand the importance of "compatibility". At that time, Microsoft's Windows Phone competed with Google's Android and Apple's iOS on the same stage. Due to the gap between different generations of the former system, especially the incompatibility of version upgrades, it directly hit the enthusiasm of users, developers and mobile phone manufacturers, making them Falling into a vicious circle of "low developer enthusiasm - slow follow-up by mobile phone manufacturers - few choices for users - users flee", and finally withdrew from the stage of history.

Who is not a "Layer2"?

Developers have never stopped researching on improving the performance of Ethereum.

As early as August 2017, the Ethereum community realized the importance of scalability. Early expansion solutions such as Plasma and state channels were only topics discussed by community developers. After personally participating in the DApp and DeFi boom, even Ordinary users also feel the need to migrate to Layer2.

Facing expansion solutions such as ZK Rollup, Optimistic Rollup, and StarkWare, DeFi projects and wallet teams need to think about which solution to choose. Ideally, it can not only reduce the transaction cost on the chain for users, but also take into account the combination and security of DeFi sex. While others are still struggling with topics such as whether Layer 2 will reduce security, development difficulty, and launch time, the pioneers have taken advantage of the window period to take a step forward.

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Source: DeFi Prime

In addition to BSC and Heco, Solana, the world's fastest blockchain, and Near, the last public chain, have successively proposed cross-chain solutions, such as the Rainbow Bridge proposed by Near in August last year, Solana in February this year. The launch of the Wormhole mainnet beta version of the two-way cross-chain bridge of Ethereum allows users to convert the corresponding ERC20 tokens for their respective ecology.

Integrating into the Ethereum ecology has become the "consensus" of many public chains. "Whether it is a public chain or various forms of Layer 2 solutions, what they will do together is to introduce assets on Bitcoin and Ethereum, and then develop their own ecology. So in a broad sense, they are all Layer 2.” Mr. Zhang, head of BSC ecology, said that the reason why BSC can achieve today’s success is not only the reason of Ethereum’s congestion window period, but also Binance’s business resources and network effect, and the reasons for the superposition of factors such as fast-executing teams.

Whether it is Layer 2 or side chain positioning, in fact, on the basis of reducing the degree of decentralization, it maximizes the "ease of use" and thus captures the support of many developers and users. But it is undeniable that the current exchange public chain still enjoys the spillover value of Ethereum, but it is difficult to predict to what extent the former can counterbalance Ethereum.

Ethereum and the future of Layer 2

Layer 2 migration and deployment is in full swing. Uniswap and Synthetix adopt Optimistic Rollup, and the latter also launched an incentive plan to reward users who staked into Synthetix L2, "I like all Rollup projects." On February 28, Vitalik expressed his approval for all projects exploring Rollup in the live broadcast , The emerging solutions also complicate the ecology of Ethereum.

At the same time, although the centralization of the exchange public chain has been criticized, their advantages are also obvious because of their own assets and traffic, and some DeFi projects have also made choices. Up to now, dForce, 1inch and other projects have also chosen BSC. "BSC has shown great vitality... 1inch's new deployment is a natural step." 1inch said in the announcement.

Although the concept of the exchange public chain has appeared as early as 2018, until the second half of last year, everyone has not established a clear understanding of the exchange public chain. Precipitating funds is still trading volume, and the exchange public chain is rapidly catching up.