Ethereum founder Vitalik: The road to Ethereum centered on Layer 2
host:
The following is the full text of the speech, published with permission:
host:Now let's get in touch with an old friend of Wanxiang Blockchain again. He is Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum and the chief scientist of Wanxiang Blockchain Lab. Since the first Wanxiang Blockchain Summit in 2015, he has never absent. Due to the epidemic, Vitalik was unable to come to the scene. He will share with you through a live broadcast connection. During the live broadcast, due to the network and other reasons, there may be unstable situations. I also ask the audience in the audience and the live broadcast room to be more understanding and forgiving. Next, let's connect with Vitalik.
Hello.
Vitalik：Hello, thank you for your introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going straight to the point.
At our recent Wanxiang Summit, the theme I have mentioned many times, and the theme that has been discussed many times at other summits is expansion. Scaling is one of the biggest challenges facing the blockchain field. Including the biggest challenges we face today, such as the blockchain is very effective in terms of decentralization and security, but the blockchain can only handle a very small transaction volume, that is, its TPS is very limited. About a few years ago, such a blockchain state did not cause us too much problem, because there were not many users of the previous blockchain. But lately we've seen a lot of people wanting to use blockchain, and that number is growing every day. And the number of people who want to do more and more things on the blockchain is increasing day by day. Now there are various applications, enterprise-level applications such as DeFi and Gamefi, and there are many application scenarios that people want to realize. This means that the blockchain must scale to provide all applications with the space they need.
There is a simple way to realize the expansion of the blockchain, and there is also a difficult way. Let me talk about the simple way first. The simple way is to increase the block size and Gas upper limit, and increase these parameters, so that the transaction volume we can handle will increase a lot. But the problem with this method is that it looks simple, but it will sacrifice decentralization. That is to achieve such expansion, by creating a huge system, in a huge system, each single node needs to process a large amount of data. Such a system is likely to lose decentralization, because few people operate such a large node.
Another way to achieve blockchain expansion is also more sustainable, that is, to use Layer 2 technology. Layer 2 technologies are complex, including some lightning networks and state channels. In addition, some applications have also used state channels, and some applications have used some solutions.
In fact, the most common technology we have seen is the so-called rollup technology. The idea behind this technology exists in many different forms. Since 2014, it has officially taken shape in 2019. In 2019, I published a blog post, saying that this PPT shows. I wrote a rollup-based technology. I wrote in it that we need to expand, and for Ethereum, it takes a long time to realize the original expansion, that is, to execute sharding. In each shard, transactions can be processed. It takes a long time. And to achieve this, many technical challenges need to be overcome, and it will take a long time. So we have to wait for a long time before we can truly realize Ethereum's native implementation of sharding expansion. The solution we have now is rollup. The concept behind rollup has gradually taken shape since 2019. And we've seen different versions of the rollup project appear on the market, and there have been some versions. We know that rollup is useful, and it is universal, and rollup can greatly improve scalability, at least 100 times so far. Data sharding is a relatively simple form of sharding. It does not create a powerful shard that can process transactions. Instead, we only create shards that can store and verify data. This is a simple shard form.
Through such sharding, we can improve the scalability of rollup, which can be increased by another 100 times. You can know that expansion is achieved through rollup, and rollup can provide us with expansion, and we know it well. For Ethereum, rollup is the only feasible scalability solution.
The difference between last year and this year is that when we used rollup to expand capacity last year, most of them were just theoretical projects. Loopring already existed last year, and other projects did not exist, but this year many rollup projects launched their own mainnet, and now their transaction fees are much lower than those of Ethereum. In fact, I also think that these numbers, that is, its transaction fees will further decrease, and I have also seen that there are actually many optimizations in this regard. For how to use rollup, it can reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored on the chain. Through this method, the gas fee required for rollup transactions can be further reduced. For example, Loopring has used many optimization solutions, and Loopring is at least 30 times cheaper than Ethereum.
There are also Arbitrum one and Optimism, the two Rollup schemes, which currently do not implement any optimization, but they are working hard. Both rollup schemes also become cheaper once they are included in the optimization scheme. Therefore, with such a rollup scheme, the transaction fee can be greatly reduced. At least it can be much lower than last year's transaction fee. If sharding can be realized, the transaction fee can be further reduced.
Now we can see that there are a variety of rollup technologies on the market, and rollup itself has many technical components. There are two main branches of rollup today, one is Optimistic Rollup, which uses a security scheme, and ZK Rollup uses zero-knowledge proof. As for Rollup Rollup and ZK Rollup, they have different advantages. For Rollup Rollup, its technology is simpler, so it is relatively easier to build Rollup Rollup, especially for general-purpose applications. For example, general-purpose applications like Ethereum smart contracts. The technology of ZK Rollup is more complicated, and its advantage is that it is more secure and can support a fast curve, instead of taking a week to exit the Rollup curve like Rollup. As far as technology is concerned, ZK's technology is not yet fully mature, but I think ZK Rollup can support a full version of Ethereum's virtual machine in a few years, and it will be realized in the next few years, and everyone can use ZK Rollup technology. In the short term, Rollup Rollup is a viable option, but in the long run we prefer ZK rollup. Once we have data shards, ZK rollup will also have other applications. And I'm also thinking about some adequate enterprise-level applications. Once ZK rollup matures, there will be enterprise-level applications. That is to say, there is no need to use a separate chain. You can use ZK rollup. ZK Roblox is connected to Ethereum, and its cost is still very low. At the same time, you can also get the benefit of being able to interconnect with the Ethereum ecosystem. Get the benefits that the Ethereum public chain has to offer.
This technology has made great progress. For example, many projects have gradually migrated their applications to Rollup. In other words, there are many projects, and I am thinking about how to build my own projects in Rollup. But there is still a lot of work to be done step by step. For example, from the perspective of today's applications, we can also think about it. Also in terms of infrastructure, we still have a lot to do. If you are an application developer, you must actively seek to find out how to migrate your application to Rollup as quickly and as safely as possible. Of course, here, our applications vary greatly, and different application mechanisms are also different. For non-financial applications, it is more important to migrate to Rollup, because in this way the cost can be reduced as much as possible, and it is very important for non-financial applications to reduce costs. For non-financial applications, their users are less willing to pay such high transaction fees. In addition, many applications are a complete system, that is, if users use this application, they hope to be able to interact with other applications. For example, games, such as the game of Dark Forest, which is a completely credit-free game based on Ethereum, this game is a good example. It continues to run on the test network now, and it can also be migrated to rollup in the future, and NFT can also be migrated to rollup. This is related to infrastructure, which can also be migrated to rollup, and financial services can also be migrated to rollup. For example, applications that use cryptocurrency for payment can also be migrated to rollup, and DAO will soon be migrated to rollup.
For different applications, the entire migration process is very different. Each application should consider whether to completely migrate to one rollup, support all rollups, or continue to store the application on Ethereum, but establish a cross-chain bridge with the rollup. Of course, the paths it achieves are very different, and each path needs to be considered. Let’s talk about infrastructure. Infrastructure is very core, and its application is an aspect of the ecosystem. In terms of infrastructure, it is the core.
For users, infrastructure is key. ENS stands for Ethereum's domain name system, which is a decentralized domain name system based on Ethereum. ENS is a very important infrastructure. Many Ethereum users use ENS. For example, I have an ENS domain name, and many Ethereum users also have ENS domain names. My own blog, also has an ENS domain name. If you go to my blog, you can see it. In the future, I expect more and more people to use ENS. The current problem of ENS is that everything is done on the main network, that is, the transaction fee is very high, which is also the challenge we face in terms of infrastructure. As we migrate ENS to rollup, ENS can live in rollup.
The second infrastructure is light clients. If we want to make the Ethereum system truly decentralized, we need a secure light client, which must be able to access not only the main network of Ethereum, but also the cross-chain bridge and rollup. That is to say, it is very easy to go from one rollup to another, which is such a cross-chain. In such cases, there is no need to wait for a long time.
The EIP-3668 proposal allows ENS and other applications to migrate to rollup, and this proposal looks very good, because it is a general-purpose proposal, and it also allows Layer1 smart contracts to specify applications, or state information about the second layer , where should you get it, you can verify the information, that is, there is a light client that does not need to be verified, such a light client can verify the data, and verify the data of Layer 2. In addition, you have an ENS domain name that can be registered , and can be updated on the second floor. No matter which second floor he exists in, the user can see this information, and use the same software to see the information in each second floor. That is, ENS is migrated and registered, subdomains can also be registered, and ENS can also be migrated to rollup. So the prospect is exciting.
The light client allows a node to verify the blockchain, but it does not need to run a full client to follow each transaction. The light client itself is very important, and for the blockchain ecosystem, it is very important to achieve decentralization. What we are doing now, through the upgrade of PoS, an important thing we are doing now is to support light clients. We support larger and more powerful light client systems, and we can achieve the same power on PoS and PoW. This is also a hard fork of PoS, that is, this week, and it will be realized in a few days. And it has an algorithm that enables light clients to verify blocks. This block is signed by the committee, which allows secure clients to access the blockchain without trusting a centralized server. In your mobile phone, in your browser, or in a piece of hardware, it acts as a cross-chain bridge for another blockchain. So it has many advantages, but such a light client system itself needs to be further expanded to be able to migrate into the rollup system. This is very important. We still need to maintain decentralization, and our efforts to further increase the decentralization of the Ethereum mainnet can be further applied to all Layer 2 protocols.
Of course, we have seen that considerable progress has been made in terms of technology, and more efforts are needed in the future.
Say the conclusion.
Layer 2 is the future of Ethereum scaling. Using Layer 2 to realize the expansion of Ethereum is the only safe way to realize the expansion of Ethereum and at the same time preserve its decentralization, because decentralization is the core of the blockchain.
EVM-compatible rollup exists, and this rollup is very powerful because it provides scalability. At the same time, it also maintains the current user experience and developer experience. So developing for rollup, and developing on rollup, is equivalent to developing on Ethereum, with some minor changes. For example, the method of block generation and packaging is different, but its virtual machine is the same, and if it is compatible with the virtual machine of Ethereum, it means that all the performance of Ethereum is preserved, and at the same time, the decentralization of Ethereum is maintained. A very important property. At the same time, this is still a work in progress, that is, we still need to work harder to build some infrastructure. Of course, for applications, a lot of effort needs to be done, and the entire ecosystem also needs a lot of effort to finally realize the expansion path of Ethereum. Not just in theory, we have a clear roadmap. Moreover, many components of this roadmap have either been realized, or have entered the mainnet deployment stage, or are under development in full swing. In other words, in the future, we look forward to more exciting jobs that will continue to appear. I am very excited about the entire Ethereum ecosystem, thank you!
